Phd Scholarship

**PhD Scholarship - Efficient Microcomb Comms**:
**Job No.**: 670140

**Location**: Clayton campus

**Employment Type**: Full-time

**Duration**: 3.5-year fixed-term appointment

**Remuneration**: $35,013 p.a. (tax-free), with top-ups potentially available

**Project**

Our demands of the internet mean that we need to put 25% more data through optical fibres every year. This supports our connected society in ever changing and increasingly critical ways and can help to decarbonize our economy. We want these trends to continue and need you to help find new technologies to support this.

This scholarship opportunity is for a PhD focused on using the correlations present in microcombs to provide novel ways to support efficient optical communication systems. Optical microcombs are a newly invented source of light, producing a precise rainbow of laser-like lines. Each of these lines are correlated in phase and frequency, which provides unique opportunities to simplify the way we run communication systems, toward low-energy, multi-terabit-per-second optical interfaces.

**Opportunity**

As part of this PhD, you will be trained in state-of-the-art optical transmission systems and become an expert in the physics of optical microcombs, telecommunications systems based on combs, and in the data processing of these systems. You will have opportunities through this project to work with local academics (this project specifically links to Adelaide University) and through international industrial partners (for this project, specifically to Nokia/Infinera).

**Details**

**Background**

Applicants with a background including project work in optics, photonics, optical communications, and/or communications engineering will be starting off with an advantage for this PhD topic.

This work aims to continue to push the envelope of what can be done with microcombs to make communications systems more efficient. Below are a few examples of past work done in this area:
At Monash, work feels different. There’s a sense of belonging, from contributing to something groundbreaking - a place where great things happen. You know you’re part of something special and purposeful because, like Monash, your ambitions drive you to make change.

**The Faculty of Engineering** is one of the largest in Australia, renowned worldwide for the quality and calibre of our teaching, research and graduates. We offer a comprehensive range of undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate and higher degree by research programs in a wide range of engineering disciplines.

The **Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering** aims to provide high quality programs for undergraduate and research students as well as undertaking and publishing high quality research. We offer internationally recognised undergraduate and research programs in telecommunications, electronics, robotics, biomedical engineering and electrical power systems. We maintain strong links with engineering professionals to ensure our programs remain at the leading edge of professional practice. We have a vibrant research culture, with major research areas in communications & RF identification, intelligent robotics, biomedical engineering and power electronics & energy.

The **ARC Centre of Excellence in Optical Microcombs for Breakthrough Science (COMBS - **combs.org.au**)** is a large dynamic, diverse and inclusive community that spans across Australia and beyond. Optical frequency combs hold remarkable promise for reshaping the realms of precision measurements, highspeed communication, sensing, and astronomical discovery. Recent advances in nanofabrication make it possible to miniaturise bulky optical and electronic systems onto microchips, thus streamlining the production and reducing costs. This emerging microcomb technology holds the key to unlocking the full potential of optical frequency combs. By joining the ARC Centre of Excellence in Optical Microcombs for Breakthrough Science (COMBS), you will play an important role in developing these microcomb technologies to transform science and society.

As a member of COMBS, you will have the opportunity to work with other COMBS scientists within the eight Australian Universities network, take advantage of internships with industry and our many international partners in Europe, Asia and the US. There will be many opportunities for learning through workshops, technology translation and entrepreneurship bootcamps, and access to top photonics scientists. COMBS values equity, diversity, inclusion, and access, and we recognise the importance of intersectionality. We are committed to creating an environment that embraces and harnesses these intersections to do the best science we can. We invite you to join us to become part of the diverse and inclusive COMBS community.

**Applications Close**: Thursday 31 October 2024, 11:55pm AEDT

**Supporting a diverse workforce