STFC PhD Studentship

STFC PhD Studentship - Secondary Impact craters

About Us

We are a world-class visitor attraction and leading science research centre. We use the Museum's unique collections and our unrivalled expertise to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today. We care for more than 80 million objects spanning billions of years and welcome more than five million visitors annually and 16 million visits to our website.

Today the Museum is more relevant and influential than ever. By attracting people from a range of backgrounds to work for us, we can continue to look at the world with fresh eyes and find new ways of doing things.

We employ 1100 staff in a variety of roles, all united by our vision of a future where people and planet thrive. We need everyone to have the passion and drive to help us with our mission to create advocates for our planet and inspire millions to care about the natural world.

Diversity and inclusion matter to us.

Our vision is of a future where both people and the planet thrive. Diversity is one of our core values and we strive to build a workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging. All new staff who join us learn about the importance of diversity and inclusion to the Museum and how to contribute to creating an inclusive environment.

We know we have more to do, but we are committed to ensuring that everyone who works at the Museum feels they can thrive and feel valued and respected.

About the role

Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) funded PhD Studentship on 'Secondary Impact Craters as Absolute Stratigraphic Markers at Landing Sites on Mars and the Moon'.

• Lead Institution: Natural History Museum (NHM)
• Lead Supervisor: Peter Grindrod, NHM
• Co-Supervisor: Joseph McNeil, NHM
• Co-Supervisor: Katherine Joy, University of Manchester
• Co-Supervisor: Gareth Collins, Imperial

The student will be registered at the University of Manchester.

Project Summary:

Impact cratering is ubiquitous across the Solar System. Due to their abundance, impact craters are key to understanding the evolution of planetary surfaces. This project will exploit the vast secondary crater population to investigate a range of features and processes on Mars and the Moon. This work will involve refining the method of primary and secondary crater identification in remote sensing data, before developing a modern workflow of their use as absolute stratigraphic markers. This novel approach will be applied to a range of key science questions on Mars and the Moon. The outcome of this project will be a new, widely applicable, and open method of deriving absolute surface ages.

About you

This project will use techniques from different disciplines, providing the student with training in the use of remote sensing data for Mars and the Moon, GIS software (e.g. ArcGIS, ENVI, SocetSet), and numerical modelling and programming languages (e.g. iSALE, Python). The project would suit an enthusiastic individual with a background in geosciences in general, and geology and/or planetary science in particular.

Thriving at the Museum: the way we work

We are proud to work at the Museum and have identified the qualities we all need to embody to reach our shared ambition. This sits alongside the Museum’s values and forms the framework for the way we work.