Master of Philosophy in Sustainability in Viticulture Scholarship in Australia

An exciting opportunity for a research masters student to work with the Australian Wine Research Institute to build insight at the intersection of sustainability and data science.

What you’ll receive

You’ll receive:

• The successful applicant will receive a living allowance of AU$35,000 per annum (full-time, fixed rate) for 2 years.
• The scholarship is for full-time study and can be used to support living costs.
• A six-month extension to the scholarship is also possible, subject to approval by QUT.
• Successful international students will be considered for a HDR tuition fee sponsorship, if successful in receiving the scholarship.
• Operating funds: $10,000 per annum

Eligibility

To be eligible for this course, you must:

• meet the academic and English language entry requirements for QUT’s Master of Philosophy (MPhil)
• be able to start studying by April or May 2021
• be able to:
  • be physically based at Australian Wine Research Institute in Urrbrae, a suburb of Adelaide in South Australia, with travel to QUT as required
  • spend a minimum time of three months at QUT during the course of your candidature.

You must have:

• a bachelor-level degree in a relevant field, e.g., statistics, data science, agriculture, environmental science
• experience in conducting and writing up a research project
• demonstrated high-level skills in data analytics
• interest and skills in agriculture in general, and wine in particular
• deep interest in sustainability skills
• excellent written and oral communication skills.

Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, this scholarship is only available for students who are already living in Australia.

QUT and the Centre are committed to Equity and Diversity among our staff and students, to ensure that we mirror the diversity of the community in which QUT exists. In 2018, this was recognised by QUT receiving a Bronze Award in the inaugural SAGE Athena SWAN gender and diversity program.

Woman and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are encouraged to apply.

How to apply

Applications will close 11:59pm (AEDT) on 18 April 2021.

For more information and how to apply, please visit Food Agility. Students are encouraged to discuss their research with Food Agility prior to applying by contacting Dr Mick Schaefer, Food Agility Research Program Manager via email.

What happens next?

If your application matches the project’s needs, you will be invited to apply for a MPhil at QUT. 

How to apply for a research degree

Indicate your interest in this scholarship by nominating Distinguished Professor Kerrie Mengersen as principal supervisor, and include the name of this scholarship in the financial details section.

If your expression of interest is accepted, you’ll be invited to submit a full application, including a research proposal, to finalise your application. You must be accepted into QUT’s MPhil program to receive this scholarship.

About the scholarship

About the project

The Food Agility CRC Industry Postgraduate Program Scholarship is for a research masters student to work with the Australian Wine Research Institute, to build insight at the intersection of sustainability and data science. This research project aims to understand the relationships between self-reported management actions, production and resource use metrics, profitability and long-term resilience. The research will build on an environmental dataset from Sustainable Winegrowing Australia (SWA) and initial quantitative analysis conducted as part of a previous Food Agility project, Valuing the Environment in Viticulture.

This aim will be met through:

• estimation: developing statistical machine learning (SML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods for estimating the relationship between the sustainability indicator (Resource Intensity Score) and other sustainability metrics, and vineyard financial performance on additional SWA datasets
• generalisation: testing and validating sustainability indicators, financial performance and the associated predictive relationships across a range of Australian wine regions
• translation: understanding and modelling links between management actions (self-reported qualitative data), production and environmental metrics and trends, and financial performance and business resilience.
• communication: developing a visualisation tool for decision making and risk assessment based on the Wine Climate Atlas.

In addition to direct outcomes from the project, further benefit will be derived from linking the project outputs to other research endeavours, such as a natural capital risk materiality assessment, that are being conducted in parallel by other members of the team.

Ultimately, this project is designed to facilitate benchmarking and decision making by synthesising and presenting data in a way that growers and associated stakeholders can meaningfully engage with.

The relationship between financial and environmental performance is of interest to growers and the viticulture industry, who need to adapt to and mitigate against climate change and natural capital shocks. The finance sector (agribusiness lenders and insurers) also need to report their climate risk exposure and other measures of the sustainability of their portfolios. To support high quality decision making, both growers and financial institutions need robust, quantitative datasets and models that are applicable across the sector.

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