Find a project or supervisor
To enrol in a University of Canterbury PhD or Doctoral Degree, you first need to find a supervisor or join an existing (funded) project.
Option 1: Join a project
Browse doctoral projects currently available at the University of Canterbury.
Search Projects
Antarctic sea ice thickness
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Earth Sciences
Project level: PhD
Supervisors: Wolfgang Rack, Daniel Price
Geospatial Research Institute Toi Hangarau PhD Scholarship 2023
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Geospatial
Project level: PhD
Additive Manufacturing Machine for Housing Construction in New Zealand
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Additive Manufacture, 3D Printing
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Don Clucas
Spatial correlation of earthquake ground motions
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Earthquake Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Robin Lee
High-frequency Physics-based Earthquake Ground Motion Simulations
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Earthquake Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Robin Lee
Social-ecological dimensions of freshwater fish management
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Human geography, social-ecological systems, enviro
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Ed Challies
Community structure and ecology of braided river terrestrial invertebrate biodiversity
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Ecology
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Angus McIntosh
Food-web dynamics of mixed introduced and native fish communities in Aotearoa New Zealand lakes
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Ecology
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Angus McIntosh
A Critical Approach to Animal Assisted Interventions
Host Faculty: Arts
General subject area: Human Services, Sociology
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Nicola Taylor
Food Sensing and Imaging Programme
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Engineering (ENEL, ENCE, ENMT, COSC) and Physics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Bill Heffernan
Novel mass spectroscopy for detection of insect biosecurity threats
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Science, Chemistry, Biology
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Steve Pawson
Career trajectories in the engineering profession
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Organisational psychology, engineering practice
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Enda Crossin
Molten oxide electrolysis processing for technology-critical, strategic metals
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Materials and Chemical Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Catherine Bishop
Interface phase transitions and degradation of Pb-free ferroelectric ceramics
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Materials Science and Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Catherine Bishop
Defect-free membranes
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Chemical and Process Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Matthew Cowan
Novel catalytic plastic waste-to-energy technology for New Zealand
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Chemical Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Alex Yip
Applications of NMR spectroscopy in Chemical Engineering
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Chemical Engineering
Project level: Masters
Supervisor: Daniel Holland
Design of hierarchical zeolites for important reactions in the oil and gas industry
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Chemical Enigneering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Alex Yip
Granular flows
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Chemical Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Daniel Holland
Impact of Pneumococcal and Varicella Vaccination on Anti-infective Prescribing
Host Faculty: Education, Health & Human Development
General subject area: Public Health
Climate change and youth citizenship: activism and anxiety
Host Faculty: Arts
General subject area: Political Science and International Relations
Supervisor: Bronwyn Hayward
Language attitudes
Host Faculty: Arts
General subject area: Linguistics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Kevin Watson
Accent variation and change in England
Host Faculty: Arts
General subject area: Linguistics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Kevin Watson
Critical Analysis of Role of Alternative Media in Society
Host Faculty: Arts
General subject area: Alternative Media
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: LindaJean Kenix
Decay resistance of naturally durable eucalyptus timber
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Forestry
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Clemens Altaner
Harnessing photoheterotrophic metabolism to convert methane into biopolymers
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Bioprocess Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Carlo Carere
Metal-organic Framework Physisorbents for Carbon Dioxide Capture
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Chemistry
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Paul Kruger
Parenting a child on the autism spectrum
Host Faculty: Education, Health and Human Development
General subject area: Clinical Psychology; Child and Family Psychology
Project level: PhD
Mindful Parenting and Autism
Host Faculty: Education, Health and Human Development
General subject area: Clinical Psychology; Child Psychology; Autism
Project level: PhD
Development of a smart material designed to attenuate oblique and direct impacts
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Mechanical / Materials Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Natalia Kabaliuk
Assessing the potential impact of funding meningococcal vaccines for children eligible for a Community Services Card...
Host Faculty: Education, Health & Human Development
General subject area: Public Health
Project level: Masters
Lessons from the Christchurch earthquakes and COVID-19 on urban food resilience
Host Faculty: Education, Health and Human Development
General subject area: Community Resilience; Food Justice
Project level: PhD
Development of a novel "three-way" catalyst for hydrogen generation from water-gas-shift reaction
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Chemical Engineering, Catalysis
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Alex Yip
Socio-ecological co-benefits of urban blue-green infrastructure and community resilience (applications have now closed)
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Urban resilience; blue-green infrastructure
Project level: PhD
Supervisors: Ed Challies, Rita Dionisio
Investigation of Jack-in-the-box Systems
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Chemistry
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Sarah Masters
Hydrogen storage materials
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Chemistry
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Sarah Masters
Towards in vitro brain model
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Tissue engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Yilei Zhang
A computer chip that thinks like the brain
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Nanotechnology, Neuromorphic computing
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Simon Brown
Artery Inflammation
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Biochemistry, Immunology, Cell biology
Project level: Masters
Supervisor: Steven Gieseg
Imaging and Detecting Vascular disease
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Biochemistry
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Steven Gieseg
Local-global principles for divisibility in algebraic groups
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Brendan Creutz
Descent algorithms for finding rational points on curves
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Brendan Creutz
Rational points and zero-cycles on bielliptic surfaces
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Brendan Creutz
Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space methods in dynamical systems
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Rua Murray
Dynamical systems and ergodic theory
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Rua Murray
Matroid theory
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Charles Semple
Topological and finite circle geometries and their automorphism groups
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Gunter Steinke
Post-quantum Cryptosystems from Diophantine equations
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Felipe Voloch
Axiomatic planes
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Geertrui Van de Voorde
Generalised quadrangles/polygons
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Geertrui Van de Voorde
Designs and their codes
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Pure Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Geertrui Van de Voorde
Crisis and Change
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Clemency Montelle
Ethnomathematics
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Mathematics Education
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Clemency Montelle
Mathematical themes from ancient mathematics
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: History and Philosophy of Mathematics Education
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Clemency Montelle
Mathematical themes from ancient mathematics
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Clemency Montelle
No flow limit for Bingham fluid flow
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Miguel Moyers Gonzalez
Bubble dynamics in an elastoviscoplastic medium
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Miguel Moyers Gonzalez
Data driven analysis of dynamical systems
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Rua Murray
Optimisation methods in transient dynamics
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Rua Murray
Pulses in heterogeneous media
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: Masters
Supervisor: Rua Murray
Mathematics of medicine
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Rua Murray
Modelling spread of COVID-19
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Michael Plank
Spatial moment dynamics for invasive populations
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Michael Plank
Marine ecosystems and fishing
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Michael Plank
Combinatorics of reticulate evolution
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Applied Mathematics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Charles Semple
Efficient survey designs
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Jennifer Brown
Spatial patterns in ecological models
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Jennifer Brown
Dose-Response Analysis
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Daniel Gerhard
Spatio-temporal modelling of environmental and crop management effects on sensory scores and chemistry profiles using hi
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Daniel Gerhard
Integrated multi-modal sensing, and machine learning application
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Thomas Li
3D volumetric and point-cloud data machine learning algorithms
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Thomas Li
Crime and punishment in England
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Elena Moltchanova
Heights of army and navy recruits
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Elena Moltchanova
Dynamic economic control charts for monitoring epidemics
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Elena Moltchanova
Analysis of spatio-temporal trends in NZ traffic & implications for benchmarking and implementation of self-driving cars
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Elena Moltchanova
Parsimonious models for multivariate time series
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Marco Reale
Spatially Balanced Sampling of Natural Resources
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Blair Robertson
Decision Trees for Statistical Learning
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Blair Robertson
Stochastic properties of speciation and extinction models
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: Masters
Supervisor: Mike Steel
Discrete random models in evolutionary biology
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Statistics and Data Science
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Mike Steel
Teen anxiety and parenting
Host Faculty: Education, Health and Human Development
General subject area: Psychology
Project level: PhD
Cryogenic Power Electronics for Superconducting Electric Motors in Aviation
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Engineering (ENEL, ENMT), Power Electronics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Bill Heffernan
Multi-Physics Power Transformer Model for Digital Twin
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Electrical Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Andrew Lapthorn
Biomimetic sensors and neurocomputing algorithms
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: neurocomputing, machine learning, artificial intel
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Yilei Zhang
Knowledge generation for smart design and manufacturing
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Mechanical engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Yilei Zhang
Development of engineered wood products utilizing small-diameter softwood and hardwood trees
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Timber engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Hyungsuk (Thomas) Lim
Swimming Lane Distribution Simulation
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: computer science, sociology, statistics
Project level: Master's
Supervisor: Christoph Bartneck
Ethical Asymmetry Perception in HRI
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: psychology, human-robot interaction, ethics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Christoph Bartneck
Valence Free Racialization In HRI
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Psychology
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Christoph Bartneck
Swimming Markup Language
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: computer science, sport, health, design
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Christoph Bartneck
Mathematical & computation techniques to enable hybrid network transient and fault analysis
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Neville Watson
Mathematical & computation techniques to enable hybrid network dynamic analysis
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Neville Watson
Spatial moment dynamics for invasive populations
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Mathematics and Statistics
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Michael Plank
Additive Manufacture of Metal, Ceramic and Polymer Components Using Screen Additive Manufacturing
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Additive Manufacture (3D Printing)
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Don Clucas
Biodegradable implant system for bone fracture fixation based on magnesium alloys
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Mechanial Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Mark Staiger
Adaptation Options for Rural Coastal Lowlands
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Civil Systems Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Tom Logan
Communicating risk with communities for local climate change adaptation
Host Faculty: Arts
General subject area: Risk Science and Communication
Project level: PhD
Supervisors: Zita Joyce, Tom Logan
Wildfire evacuation perspective on urban planning
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Civil and Natural Resources Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisors: Daniel Nilsson, Ruggiero Lovreglio
Application of Construction 4.0
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Structural Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Gregory MacRae
Predicting and scaling the benefits of trees on farms
Host Faculty: Science
General subject area: Biological Sciences
Project level: PhD
Supervisor: Jason Tylianakis
Simulation-based Multi-objective Optimization for Energy Efficient and Sustainable School Buildings
Host Faculty: Engineering
General subject area: Civil and Natural resources Engineering
Project level: PhD
Supervisors: Wentao Wu, Brian Guo
Option 2: Find a supervisor
Explore UC research profiles to identify academics who are conducting research in your topic area and who may be interested in becoming a supervisor of your research.