PhD student ship, a possible chance of a lifetime

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Dear All,

I have a PhD studentship, which will pay for a student to do a PhD at Chalmers University of Technology.

The PhD project is on the modification of waste plastic to allow waste plastic to be recycled. Currently unwanted plastic objects are put through a shredder to allow some parts to be recycled. One fraction of plastic fragments is impossible to separate, and some mixtures of plastic can not be turned into high value objects. As a result, the recycled plastic is currently doomed to be burnt, dumped in a landfill or turned into low value products.

The waste plastic will be altered by treatment with gamma rays and some organic chemicals to try to improve it.

The student would become a member of the industrial materials recycling section at Chalmers. This is a section of the Chemical and Biological Engineering department, which has close links to the Nuclear Chemistry section of the same department. The student will be co supervised by at least one member of staff from the Polymeric Materials and Composites section of the Department of Materials and Manufacturing Technology.

While experience of working with radiation would be an advantage existing experience is not vital, full training on how to work in a safe and effective way with radiation / radioactivity will be provided. What the student will need is a willingness to learn how to do new things.

The project would suit a person with an education in either chemistry or chemical engineering.

If you have any questions about this PhD studentship then please contact Dr Mark Foreman or one of the other people by email.

www dot chalmers dot se/chem/EN/news/vacancies/positions/two-phd-student

Deadline for applications 26 April 2010

PS. I have checked with Alex that it is OK to post the advert on the website.

Curses, if only I were graduating with my Masters sooner (I'm doing a lot of polymers research), this sounds amazing.

Two things:
1 - You very possibly may not need to finish your master's before starting a PhD. I personally dropped out of a master's program in order to start a PhD program, and I do not regret it. Check if this specific program requires a master's degree before dismissing it.
2 - There are many PhD research programs which will waive your tuition and give you a stipend, especially in scientific research fields. Still, it's rare for a good project in your field with funding attached to fall into your lap, so you may want to give this some serious consideration.

Oh I'm aware of that, but:
1 - The professor for whom I'm working has helped me more than any other living person, and I've promised to work as the lab manager of his polymers characterization lab for a minimum of two years because of this (ending after Spring 2011).
2 - I already get said stipend and tuition waiver for doing both GTA and GRA work.

Besides that, it's also my grandparents' wish for me to stay near while they're still around (my grandma's not exactly in the best of health), and Sweden's just a wee bit far away.

Obres made an interesting remark about money, I would like to point out that the PhD studentship does include money for the student to live on.

In a more general sense, as someone from the EU, how would I go about getting on a funded PhD in Sweden. I will have to start looking next year as my degree finishes mid 2011.