SAAO Prize Scholarship 2019 for South African PhD students (R180,000 per year (plus support for tuition, equipment and travel).

Application Deadline: 3rd August 2018

Degree Funded: 3-year PhD
Funding Amount: R180,000 per year (plus support for tuition, equipment and travel).
Start of Funding: 2019

The SAAO Prize Scholarship is a prestigious annually awarded scholarship offered to a top South African student to work on a PhD project supervised by researchers at the SAAO. The scholarship is for a 3-year PhD registered at a South African university and the student will be required to spend a minimum of 60% of their time at the SAAO. The scholarship will cover tuition and a generous stipend for living expenses. Additional support for conference travel and equipment will be provided.  .

Projects Offered:

• Probing galaxy evolution through diffuse light in dense environments
  Supervisors: Ros Skelton ([email protected]) and Sarah Blyth (UCT)/Ilani Loubser (NWU) : Project details
• Observational studies of Centaurs, interesting and transitional minor planets
  Supervisor: Amanda Sickafoose ([email protected]) : Project details
• Discovery and Characterization of Near-Earth Asteroids
  Supervisors: Amanda Sickafoose ([email protected]) and Nicolas Erasmus ([email protected]) : Project details
• Optical and radio transient sources
  Supervisors: Retha Pretorius ([email protected]), David Buckley ([email protected]), and Alida Odendaal (UFS; [email protected]) : Project details

Eligibility:

• The scholarship is currently open to South African citizens who hold, or are studying towards, an MSc degree in physics, astrophysics, or a closely related area (ideally with some astronomy background), and must be ready to register for a PhD at the start of the 2019 academic year.

• The applicant should send their CV, a letter of motivation and academic transcript to [email protected], and arrange for 2 letters of reference to be sent directly to [email protected] by the closing date.
• The selection criteria will be academic merit, motivation, aptitude for research, transformation considerations, and results of the interview

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the SAAO Prize Scholarship 2019