UQ’s School of Engineering is waiving postgraduate research study fees for outstanding international students to help fill engineering research gaps in Australia.
The School of Engineering will waive international students’ tuition fees, worth about $30,000 a year for PhD studies.
Thirty-one places will be offered initially in a range of engineering research fields including; chemical, biological, metallurgical, mining, environmental, civil, mechanical and materials engineering.
The number of PhD fee-waivers on offer is believed to be the largest in engineering in Australia.
Head of UQ’s School of Engineering Professor Graham Schaffer said the radical move was designed to boost UQ’s engineering research quality and output.
“We’ve taken the bold step of committing to provide fee-waivers for international students who choose to undertake research in some of the School’s identified research priority areas,” Professor Schaffer said.
“The emphasis is on recruiting quality students to produce excellent research, not on numbers of students.
“We are growing rapidly. Our undergraduate numbers have almost doubled in the last five years and we’ve appointed 17 new academic staff this year alone.”
Engineers are in demand around the country making it difficult to attract the best engineers back to university from well-paid mining and industrial jobs.
To qualify for the fee waiver, students must meet high academic standards by achieving first class honours or equivalent in their undergraduate engineering degree.
UQ’s School of Engineering is one of the premier engineering teaching and research contributors in Australia with annual research income of more than $21 million and a high success rate in Australian Research Council grants.
The School’s research strengths include: hypersonics, light metals, functional nanomaterials, chemical engineering, mining machinery, metallurgy and water.
UQ Engineering enjoys particularly strong industry links with many industry-funded Chairs and research projects.
For more details on the research projects available with tuition fee waivers, visit the School of Engineering website or contact Marilyn Wilckens on +61 7 3365 4202, or rhd@eng.uq.edu.au
The first round intake will be decided before the end of the year but it is expected more fee-waived research places will be available as research funding increases.
MEDIA: Kim Jensen at UQ Engineering (07 3346 9976, k.jensen@uq.edu.au) or Miguel Holland at UQ Communications (07 3365 2619)
