Access to data provides the fuel for next generation decision support systems, and opportunities for sharing data across national and international borders, and across government, industry and academic sectors, have never been greater. While the global movement towards making data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) has been rapidly adopted in some domains, it has been lagging in the agricultural and food industries.
However, collecting more data and increasing its availability is only part of the solution to the major challenges, as there are limitations in how to transform these data into pragmatic actions to, for example, improve soil, plant and water management; or product marketing. These limitations are largely due to the distributed custodianship and heterogeneity of agricultural data, making it difficult for an end-user to discover, access and harmonise the data. Although there may be an impressive volume of global agricultural data available, few users have the capacity or desire to overcome these difficulties and extract value from the data.
This project will adopt the latest international advances in syntactic and semantic interoperability to develop standardised data streams from disparate sources to enrich decision support systems used within the agricultural and food industries.
This scholarship is provided by the Food Agility Cooperative Research Centre; a $150M, 10 year, innovation hub supporting digital innovation in Australia’s agri-foods sector. The scholarship includes a stipend of $35,000 p.a. for 3 years, supported by up to $10,000 p.a. operating funds.
The Scholarship is available to both domestic and international applicants wishing to undertake a PhD (or Masters by research) degree. Applicants must apply for candidature or have received a letter of offer of candidature at Federation University.
For applicants already holding a higher degree by research scholarship, the scholarship may be converted to a top-up of $10,000 p.a. with $5,000 p.a. in additional project operating funds.
HOW TO APPLY: Applicants are encouraged to discuss their application with the Principal Supervisor, Peter Dahlhaus (p.dahlhaus@federation.edu.au) and apply via https://www.foodagility.com/researchers-apply
The scholarship will be awarded on the basis of student merit and will be considered on a first-come-first-served basis.
