Each year ANU may offer a limited number of awards known as the Digital Agriculture PhD Scholarships.

The objective of these awards is to provide funding to support outstanding candidates to pursue a PhD program at ANU, where the focus of their research is on a collaborative project between CSIRO and ANU in the field of information science relevant to agriculture.

Funding for this award has been provided by CSIRO’s Data61 – Australia’s leading data innovation group. Their mission is to create Australia’s data driven future by building the world’s leading data-focused research and innovation powerhouse.

Digital agriculture is ag done differently. What does that mean?

In the future, agriculture will have to address new and complex challenges. Technology, and particularly emerging digital capability, impacts how things are done across the entire value chain. To ensure food security and sustainability for the future, agriculture needs experts in traditional farming practice, as well as experts in new technologies.

If you plan to do a PhD in the field of information science on a topic relevant to agriculture (including, but not limited to, plant sciences, synthetic biology, biochemistry, ecology, environmental studies, robotics, AI, machine learning, data modelling, remote sensor technology, or any other field based at ANU), you may be eligible for this award.

This is a unique opportunity to work with some of the best minds across CSIRO and ANU and play an important role in the future of digital agriculture.

Scholarship details

There are two different scholarships available. 

• Full scholarship ($36,652 per year for 3.5 years), plus a supplementary scholarship ($15,000 per year) and a research support allowance ($5000)
• Supplementary scholarship ($15,000 per year for 3.5 years), plus a research support allowance ($5000)

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply for this award students must be undertaking one of the approved projects below. An additional requirement for those applying to the supplemental scholarship on its own is to have applied for or be the recipient of, a base PhD scholarship from ANU.

More information about eligibility to apply for the award is available here.

How to apply

To apply for this award candidates must first be accepted for an approved project topic. To register your interest in one of the projects, candidates must:

• Complete the Expression of Interest form by 11 August 2024
• EOI will be reviewed by the project supervisors
• Shortlisted students will be contacted to develop the full application

Applicants wishing to be considered for more than one project should complete and submit separate EOI forms for each topic of interest.

List of Projects

Full scholarship plus supplementary scholarship

Integrating Climate Change Projections with Machine Learning for Predictive Modelling of Food Security Risks in Australia

Machine Learning-Based Bio-Origin Detection for Australian Agricultural Product Authentication with Data Privacy

Early Disease and Pest Detection in Agriculture through 3D Computer Vision and Hyperspectral Imaging Techniques

Digital approaches to uncover below-ground crop architecture driving increased productivity

Transparent Agricultural Traceability with Privacy-preserving Data Sovereignty by Blockchain and Zero-knowledge Proofs

Large language model (LLM) enhanced digital representation of smell for food manufacturing

Generative AI for Precision Livestock Agriculture: Enhancing Health, Welfare, and Sustainability

Protecting Cybersecurity of Agricultural Artificial Intelligence and Internet-of-Things

Data-Driven Precision Farming by Multi-Modal Foundational Models and its Application to Plant Photosynthesis

Generative enzyme modeling for a residual material degradation.

Collaborative filtering for species-chemicals toxicology prediction

Blue sky water management and crop health/yield monitoring

Nutrient balance strategies to build soil carbon in farming systems

Sensing the next step change in water productivity in dryland agriculture

Machine learning approaches for developing Farm Emulators

Supplementary scholarship

Multiple Motif Matching Automata to Explore Genome Language Model to predict the protein 3D structure

Accurate 3D Reconstruction with Multi-View Imagery: Scalable Solutions for Digital Agriculture

Transparent Agricultural Traceability with Privacy-preserving Data Sovereignty by Blockchain and Zero-knowledge Proofs

Large language model (LLM) enhanced digital representation of smell for food manufacturing

Generative AI for Precision Livestock Agriculture: Enhancing Health, Welfare, and Sustainability

Data-Driven Precision Farming by Multi-Modal Foundational Models and its Application to Plant Photosynthesis

Machine learning approaches for developing Farm Emulators

Key dates

Contact

Questions about the scholarship may be directed to agrifood@anu.edu.au