PhD Scholarships: Modelling and control of storage and flow constrained irrigation networks
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
Up to three PhD scholarships are available in modelling and control of open channel networks for water distribution. The candidates will work as part of a team of academic staff and students. The team has collaborated for more than two decades with an industry partner in the area.
The on-going aim of the broad research program is to develop modelling and control methodologies for irrigation channels where there are significant constraints on the in-channel storage and/or on the ability to set the inflow to the network of channels. Problems of interest include, but are not limited to:
(i) Control of irrigation channels with constraints on the network inflow;
(ii) System identification and control of irrigation channels with steep reaches;
(iii) Large-scale distributed control of supply driven irrigation networks;
(iv) Supply and demand management for irrigation channels with stochastic model predictive control;
(v) Bumpless transfer between supply driven and demand driven operations of irrigation channels; and
(vi) Fundamental limits of pure feedback control of storage constrained irrigation channels.
An ideal candidate will have:
(i) Master's degree in Engineering or Applied mathematics or a related discipline (candidates with a strong Bachelor's degree will also be considered);
(ii) Strong background in one or more of the following topics: dynamical systems, control, optimisation, system identification, estimation and signal processing.
Applications will be processed as they are received. Positions are open until filled, but not later than the 31st of January 2022.
Please send your CV, transcripts and a short motivational statement (one page or less) to Prof Erik Weyer (ewey@unimelb.edu.au) or Prof Michael Cantoni (cantoni@unimelb.edu.au)
