• Grow your passion for IoT and blockchain through in-depth research.
• Kick-start your career with an industry placement during your PhD.
• Apply for the University of New South Wales-CSIRO Industry PhD Program!

The UNSW-CSIRO Industry PhD (iPhD) is an elite industry-focused research program that provides an innovative four-year applied research training experience that gives graduates a competitive advantage across a broad range of future career paths. This program bridges the ‘research-industry divide’ in Australia and creates research and innovation leaders for the future. Graduates are work ready, understand the needs of industry and have the know-how to collaborate with others.

Project Title: Leveraging IoT and Blockchain for Transforming Construction Operations

Project details: The construction industry is ripe for disruption, greater transparency in supply chains is much needed, paperwork is still predominant, and as building components increasingly become ‘intelligent’ there is need for new mechanisms to manage the increasingly complex inter-organisational interactions. This PhD project aims to develop a blockchain-based framework which will provide a trustworthy infrastructure for information management during all building life-cycle stages. The decentralised, permissionless and censorship resistant approach of blockchain technology opens up new ways to track the flow of materials, contracts and payments in supply chains.

This project will design a holistic framework for recording value exchange, administering self-executing smart contracts to trigger progress payment claims between stakeholders along the construction value chain, and combining them to form a decentralised autonomous organisation, certifying proof of existence for specific data (e.g. identity) and transparent regulation checks. Our framework will integrate with Internet of Things (IoT) devices for automation and validation of various processes. A complete implementation will be developed and evaluated.

Coaching and mentoring will form a critical part of your highly personalised career and professional development plan.

Industry Partner: Ynomia - Ynomia is on a mission to help close construction's digital divide. Ynomia is developing the next generation of construction productivity and safety tools.
Internship Duration: Minimum 6 month industry internship.
Location: The candidate will be based at CSIRO's Data61 Pullenvale campus in Brisbane and will be expected to travel occasionally to the UNSW Kensington Campus in Sydney. The industry internship will be at the Ynomia offices in Melbourne.
Scholarship: Annual $40,000 scholarship over four years, plus project research support funds of $10,000 per annum (additional travel allowance available for conference presentations supported by the School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW).
Reference: 59303

The PhD research student will work with a team comprised of Associate Professor Salil Kanhere (CSE, UNSW), Prof. Raja Jurdak (Data61 CSIRO) and industry experts from Ynomia. Further information can be obtained from Associate Professor Salil Kanhere (salil.kanhere@unsw.edu.au) or Professor Raja Jurdak (raja.jurdak@csiro.au)

The candidate is expected to start in February 2019.

Pre-Requisites/Eligibility
To be eligible to apply you must be:

• an Australian Citizen or Permanent Resident;
• not already enrolled in a PhD;
• able to meet UNSW admission criteria (https://research.unsw.edu.au/research-higher-degree-programs); and
• meet UNSW English Language Requirements (https://www.unsw.edu.au/english-requirements-policy).

Applications will be assessed on:

1. Experience relevant to the field of research, including any research experience
2. Suitability for the project
3. Academic excellence
4. Motivation for undertaking an Industry-led PhD project

Further information on UNSW-CSIRO Industry PhD (iPhD) Program and application process is available at: https://research.unsw.edu.au/industry-phd/.

How to Apply:
Interested candidates should email their CV and transcripts to Salil Kanhere (salil.kanhere@unsw.edu.au) and Raja Jurdak (Raja.Jurdak@data61.csiro.au).

Applications close: Friday 18th January 2019