2026 Studentships

Studentship projects for cohort 2026/27.

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Iapetus projects for the 2026/27 cohort will be added here from September 2025, with a complete list of projects by the beginning of November 2025. The Studentship Competition will open in November 2025. Please see this page for more details.

Diffusion Clocks: Decoding Magma Ascent Speed Beneath Volcanoes

Understanding the ecological interplay between tree planting and natural processes to create future forests

Examining ecological shifts and impacts of adaptive divergence in response to geothermal habitats

Critical Metal insights from historic mines around Loch Tay : An atomistic approach to understanding critical metal enrichment pathways in mineral and mine wastes

Sustainability in creel fisheries

Tracking and tracing contaminated sediment in historic mining headwater catchments

The impacts of electromagnetic fields from offshore cabling on lobster (Homarus gammarus) and crab (Cancer pagurus) behaviour

Soil sulfur: a source or sink of greenhouse gases in boreal landscapes?

Understanding how a threatened seabird moves across complex ocean energyscapes

Understanding Biological Responses to Arctic Sea-Ice Geoengineering climate intervention

The origin of animals: Building a precise timeline from the geological record

Determining the Impacts of Wildfires, from a local to global scale, using Satellite-based Observations.

Characterisation and analysis of anthropogenically influenced fluvial catchments and geomorphology in the Philippines

From preferences to pollination: do hummingbirds and bees differ in how they choose flowers?

Modelling landscape-level approaches for mitigating the evolution of pesticide resistance

Representing runout in landslide nowcasts to improve disaster information and response

Reconstructing past ice-sheet retreat and ice-ocean interactions from marine sediment cores.

MINELOOP: Investigating MINEwater systems using closed-LOOP geothermal technologies

Assessing the Hydro ecological Impacts of Climate-Driven Extreme Events on UK Rivers

Landslide-flood interactions in the Himalayan mountain range in a warming climate

Carbonatite exsolution from Nepheline Syenite: The Lillebukt Nepheline Syenite-Carbonatite Complex, Northern Norway

Formation of rare metal (Li-Ta-Sn) melts on the Precambrian Earth

A metallogenic model for lithium and rare metal resources in the Glen Gairn granite

Reproductive isolation in a species group of Drosophila

Vocal behaviour of killer whales and the dual pressures of ship noise and predation on Arctic marine mammals

The evolution of reproductive isolation in rubyspot damselflies

Antarctic sea ice, circulation and ice sheet interactions in the Southeastern Weddell Sea

Understanding grounding line dynamics in response to ice stream uncoupling

The role of tree-based landscapes in improving food security and nutrition across West Africa

Unravelling nutrient feedbacks across the Great Oxidation Event

Din in the dark: the effects of anthropogenic noise on hibernation behaviour and physiology in hedgehogs

Modelling internal tsunamis generated by glacial calving

Holocene ice sheet-ocean interaction and glacimarine sedimentation in Greenland fjords

Leveraging wild hybrids to map the genomic mechanisms of life-history variation in a primitive vertebrate.

Testing Local Adaptation During Ecosystem Restoration in Burying Beetles

Designing Resilient Landscapes: Integrating Nature-based Solutions and Flood Defences into Catchments

Reconstructing glacier histories and investigating glacial geomorphology in the Sør Rondane Mountains, East Antarctica.

Occupancy, density and the ecology of terrestrial British mammals

Passive Seismic Imaging of Under-explored Central Iceland

Evolutionary Trade-offs in Edible Insect Breeding: When Sexual and Artificial Selection Collide

Intelligent Geothermal Energy Development: AI-Enhanced Modelling and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

Can microclimate refugia save an iconic floral assemblage under climate change?

Getting to the core of the Great Glen Fault

Investigating the organic matter reactivity continuum in UK Coastal Shelf Seas.

AI-Driven Satellite Embeddings for Fine-resolution Mapping and Tracking Global Coastal Vegetated Ecosystem Change (2017-2024)

Adapting to the Urban Night: Behavioural and Genomic Responses in Nocturnal Predators

Probabilistic flood prediction and modelling using machine learning

Predator defence in anemonefishes

Characterising methane productivity during the Late Holocene in Arctic Sweden

Scalable early warning and rapid response data systems for invasive species biosecurity.

Discovering the long-term extent and chronology of traditional dryland agriculture

Explorations of symbiosis along a parasite-mutualist continuum

Understanding the role of complexity and diversity in riparian woodland resilience to extreme events.

What controls ice flow across Palmer and Ellsworth Lands, Antarctica?

Paths to Cooperation: The Combined Effects of Social, Network, and Environmental Factors on the Success of Cooperative Strategies in Bacteria

Weathering vs. climate change: Quantifying recent silicate weathering using novel isotope tracers

Transforming landscapes: the role of large herbivores in Holocene ecosystem dynamics

Microbial degradation of glacial POPs

A beneficial plant-microbial interaction: the ecology of flax retting.

Investigating interactions between subglacial landscape evolution and Antarctic Ice Sheet behaviour

Hidden Risks of Saline Intrusion: Climate-Driven Sea-Level Rise and Geotechnical Implications for Coastal Stability

Understanding the diverse impacts of human activity on primate behaviour and physiology

Time-evolving hazard and risk from Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in Bhutan.

Climate change impacts on soil biodiversity and functioning in mountain ecosystems

Rockfall detection and modelling in the rapidly deglaciating Mont Blanc massif

Blue Carbon accumulation, transformation and storage: Quantifying biogeochemical processes in saltmarsh ecosystems.

Tracing Micronutrient behaviour accompanying forestation and climate change

Integrating molecular dietary analysis, nutritional ecology and network inference to assess ecosystem service trade-offs in omnivorous beetles

Monitoring Scotland’s fresh waters from space: re-engineering the state-of-art using artificial intelligence

Drivers of changing geohazard exposure and risk in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya

Powering Net Zero from Below: The Future of Mine Water Geothermal Energy

Isotopic window into past & future of peatland methane emissions (ISOPEAT)

How important is mantle carbonation in Earth’s long-term carbon cycle?

Physical and chemical drivers of bedrock river channel erosion

Assessing the geothermal potential of Scottish granites by establishing their long-term thermal history

Environmental and ‘One Health’ ecology of clinically pathogenic fungi

Reservoirs of Bacterial Pathogens in Captive Animal Enclosures: Evolutionary Drivers in a Changing Climate

The role of ditches in the global carbon cycle: A critical & unrecognised player.

Microbial ecological archaeology of Antarctic microbes through single cell genomics

Stratosphere–Troposphere Coupling and Its Role in Antarctic Coastal Melt Events and Supraglacial Lake Formation

From Forests to Fevers: Network Models of Disease Emergence in Human-Modified Landscapes

How does ice flow enhancement and rearrangement impact the West Antarctic Ice Sheet?

Plinian eruption deposits from Las Cañadas Caldera, Tenerife: constraining eruption frequencies, eruption cycles and the Quaternary evolution of the island

Peat soil crusts: formation, desiccation and modelling of transport by wind

Mathematical models for treescape resilience in a changing climate

Modelling urban infrastructure interdependencies under flood conditions via dynamic graph learning

PROTECTION OF SEABED CARBON IN SHELF SEDIMENT

The contribution of mesopelagic fish to the functioning of the Southern Ocean Ecosystem in a changing climate – an isotopic study.

From Wandering Albatrosses to Hedgehogs: Using AI and Citizen Science to Improve Biodiversity Monitoring under Ground Truth Uncertainty

Eruptive Brines and Active Ice: Modelling Subduction, Brine Dynamics and Cryovolcanism on Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa

Measuring the isotopic fingerprint of Greenland Ice Sheet melt

What drives aggression? Linking Ecology, Evolution, and Genes

Role of Plant Functional Diversity in Modulating Grassland Responses to Grazing and Drought

From Sound to Structure: Explainable AI for Multimodal Ecosystem Health Monitoring

Origin and evolutionary dynamics of rainforest assembly in the Fiji Islands

Automated Continuous In-situ Dissolved Metal Monitoring & Modelling (ACID M3)

From ice to ecosystem: assessing the risk of glacier melt and legacy contamination for reindeer in Sápmi (Lapland)

Fluid transport of heat and metals: understanding the formation of highly permeable fracture systems in granite

Of woods and waders: balancing the competing benefits of conservation and restoration

Tectonics, Topography, and Transport: Sediment routing systems and sinks of the Strathclyde Group, Midland Valley Scotland.

Mineral entrapment within protocells: key to the origin of life?

Investigating past changes in Greenland melting and its impacts on ocean circulation as a key to the future.

Heavy metal insights into the formation of planet Earth

Telling the time in turbulent oceans: How do phytoplankton use clocks and carbon to survive deep mixing?

Quantifying the frequency and causes of extreme wet and dry periods in the Himalayas

Earth’s Deep Time CO2 and Mass Extinctions

Healing and Harm: invasive species, medicinal plant use, and community-based conservation in South Africa

Exploring how plasticity and morphology shape life history strategies in ectotherms

Linking persistence, predictability and extremes in a changing climate

Source or sink? The roles of glacier melt and sediment transport for the carbon budget of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Modelling effects of climate change on future kelp habitats and associated commercial fisheries

Greenhouse gas balance in an agricultural grassland system with enhanced rock weathering of basalt as a carbon dioxide removal strategy

Volatile happenings on the igneous side of metamorphism

Pleistocene to present-day sea level puzzles in Patagonia: disentangling the sea-level budget to improve regional ice history.

Point process methods for mapping wildlife distributions from biased and incomplete data

Resilient Coastal Communities: Nature-based Solutions to Mitigate Compound Flood Risks

Role of turbidity currents in organic carbon and nutrient transport to deep-sea environment

The cognitive ecology of wild bumblebees

Light for Life: Optical Sensing Platforms for Environmental Water Quality Monitoring

Ecological Colonisation of New Anthropogenic Rocks

Advancing ultra-high resolution palaeoenvironmental records from lake sediment cores through integrated laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy and hyperspectral imaging

Reactive Fracturing and Carbonation Dynamics in Mafic and Ultramafic Rocks under CO₂ Storage Conditions

Seascape ecology of the Antarctic Peninsula

Machine Learning for Innovative Slope Design to Radically Decarbonise Open Pit Mining

When nutrients turn toxic: how metals shape microbial coexistence

Listening to Food Webs: Ecoacoustic insights into Bird Predator–Prey Networks in Changing Landscapes

The glaciers of South Georgia from the 1950s to 2100 CE

Mathematical modelling of Ecosystem Resilience in a Changing Climate

The legacy of lost woods: soil microbial communities and the regeneration of the Caledonian Forest

Investigating the oceanic impacts of Greenland’s meltwater

Peat-forming seasonally flooded forests of the Peruvian Amazon: distribution, carbon storage, and long-term ecology

Feathered Witnesses: Unravelling the Impact of Habitat Loss on Neotropical Avifauna with Stable Isotope Analysis

The vulnerability of tourists to volcanic hazards in Indonesia

How Earthquakes Become Tsunamis: Investigating Rupture Propagation into Subduction Zone Accretionary Prisms

Rewired ecosystems: connecting structure, function and biodiversity in beaver-engineered landscapes

The history of tropical peatland vegetation in Peruvian Amazonia and implications for conservation and management

Unravelling the Co-evolution of Climate Extremes and Vegetation Dynamics across Global Ecosystems

How Age-Dependent Sexual Selection and Parity Mode Shape Fitness Trajectories in Reptile Reproduction

How did Earth become a habitable planet? Revealing the origins of Earth’s water using Antarctic meteorites

Investigating multiple causes of saltmarsh compaction – how important is biodegradation?

Small-scale fisheries’ contributions to nutrition and food security under a changing climate

The coral biomineralisation response to temperature and pH change in the Central Pacific over the last 500ka

Sediment release from glacial valleys in a changing climate: Interactions between valley morphology, sediment dynamics, and climate variations

Beyond the Target: Integrating microchemistry and morphology to uncover diversity and connectivity in four non-target species from the deep waters of the Southern Ocean

Secure and Decentralized Federated Learning for Environmental Forecasting

Nature-based solutions for coastal management – The role of biofilms in induced carbonate precipitation and sediment stability

Sundaland Reimagined: The Reconstruction of a Lost Cenozoic Continent

Assessing Magmatic Dead Carbon Effects on Radiocarbon Dates: A Multi-Method Investigation of Volcanic CO₂ Degassing at Laacher See, Germany

Using functional genomics to assess population health after a local reintroduction of the field cricket in Cornwall

The impact of horizontal gene transfer on the evolution of eukaryotes

Sounding out the deep: using AI and passive acoustic monitoring to reveal spatial and temporal patterns in deep-sea ecosystems

Cracks in the ice: Disentangling the threats to Arctic ice shelves

Under Pressure: comparative assessment of the effects of hydrostatic pressure, and oxygen availability on marine and freshwater animal physiology

Trade-offs between wildness and wellbeing in restored landscapes: blue health, beavers and rewilding

Reconstructing the South Orkney Ice Cap – a sentinel of Antarctic Ice Sheet change

Modelling vector control for Aedes-borne arboviruses

Environmental drivers in archaeology: past, present and future under the lens of geophysics

Investigating records of terrestrial precursors in the early Solar System using Cr, Ni and Zn isotope compositions of meteorites

Quantifying Past Variations in Southern Ocean Primary Productivity from Sulfur Isotopes in Antarctic Ice Cores

Physics, biology and ecology of toxic plankton blooms

Quantifying indoor and outdoor air pollution in central Scotland to support actions to improve health (Forth-ERA)

Coastal Hydrodynamic Water Quality Modelling using Machine Learning Techniques

What happens to millennia of mercury contamination in peatlands under a warming climate?

Changing freshwater inputs to the Southern Ocean due to rapid climatic change