PhD Studentship: Advancing Multi-Mission Satellite Radar for Monitoring Permafrost Degradation and Erosion in a Changing Arctic

Overview

This PhD studentship focuses on developing a new multi-mission InSAR framework by integrating Sentinel-1 C-band and NISAR L-band observations to monitor permafrost degradation and erosion in the Arctic. The research addresses the challenges of tracking ground deformation across vast and remote regions by combining complementary information from different satellite missions. The project investigates wavelength-dependent scattering, spatial and temporal sampling differences, viewing geometries, and measurement uncertainties. Through joint inversion approaches, the work aims to improve estimates of temporally evolving three-dimensional ground deformation, using Arctic permafrost environments as a real-world testbed.

What you get

The studentship provides funding for tuition fees and an annual stipend of £21,805 for the 2026/7 academic year. The project includes the opportunity for a research visit to Montana State University to gain experience in an international, interdisciplinary research environment. The student will also receive advanced training in satellite radar remote sensing, InSAR, inverse methods, scientific programming, and environmental data analysis, while working with large Earth observation datasets and high-performance computing resources such as the COMET-LiCSAR processing framework and JASMIN.

Key dates

The closing date for applications is 2026-12-08.