Undergraduate research experience placement in Plant-Soil Interactions at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (www.ceh.ac.uk), Lancaster

A funded opportunity is available for an undergraduate student (subject to eligibility, see below) to undertake a research placement at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (www.ceh.ac.uk), Lancaster Environment Centre during the summer of 2018. The project will explore the resilience of UK agriculture to extreme flooding events. For this work we follow the response in plant productivity, microbial community assembly and greenhouse gas exchange after extreme flooding of grassland and arable crop experimental systems. The wider project is funded under the NERC Soil Security Programme (https://www.soilsecurity.org/extreme-rainfall/). The project will run for 8-10 weeks during the summer and has a flexible start date from the end of May to July. Ideally we would like applicants to start early during this window. The student will be supported by a stipend of £200 per week through the NERC STARS Centre for Doctoral Training (http://www.starsoil.org.uk/). The placement will provide broad experience in plant-soil interaction research with specific opportunities to gain expertise in greenhouse gas measurement, stable isotopes, the operation of analytical instrumentation, the use of soil sensors and data handling and interpretation.

For more information and to apply for this position please email Dr Niall McNamara (nmcn@ceh.ac.uk) at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. Applications/enquiries will be considered as they come in and the position will close once filled.

Please note the following eligibility criteria. Applicants should:

• be studying for an undergraduate degree in a quantitative discipline outside of NERC’s scientific remit (e.g. mathematics, statistics, computing, engineering, physics)
• be applying for a placement in a different department to their undergraduate degree,
• be undertaking their first undergraduate degree studies (or integrated Masters),
• be expected to obtain a first or upper second class UK honours degree,
• be eligible for subsequent NERC PhD funding (i.e. UK, EU or right to remain in the UK.