PhD Scholarship in Electronic Engineering, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

PhD Scholarship in Electronic Engineering, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Background
The Electronic Instrumentation research group at Victoria University of Wellington was recently awarded funds for the development of new Nuclear Magnetic Resonance technologies. We are now looking for a suitable PhD student to assist with this work. The research grant provides a three year NZ $27,000 per annum tax free scholarship as well as tuition fees.

The Project
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance is a relatively new sensing technology that has yet to be applied to the everyday world. One of the barriers to adoption is the complexity of the method and the sophistication, size and cost of the supporting electronics. The aim of this project is to continue the development of compact high performance systems by taking advantage of new FPGA, sampling and signal processing technologies. More specifically we wish to design a high performance band-pass sampling digital NMR receiver where traditional RF techniques are replaced by new signal processing methods. The student will be required to research and design stable and low jitter frequency references for wide band analogue to digital conversion and to research, design, model and implement optimal digital receiver architectures for NMR applications. The work will be undertaken within the School of Engineering and Computer Science but with close collaboration with Professor Paul Callaghan’s NMR group in the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences and Magritek Ltd.

The Student
Applicants are invited from excellent and enthusiastic students wishing to undertake a PhD in this area. A good background in analogue and digital electronic hardware design, FPGA programming, embedded programming and digital signal processing is desired. Students should have a first class Honours or a Masters degree in electronics. Applications from both domestic and international students are invited.

Contact
Dr Robin Dykstra
robin.dykstra[ at ]vuw.ac.nz
http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Main/RobinDykstra

Closing date: 1 July 2009