On behalf of Emanuele, Chai, Poh and myself, I am very happy to announce that in 2018 we will launch a co-supervised PhD program between the Clayton and Sunway sites of Monash Engineering.

The objectives of this co-supervised PhD program are twofold:

a) to provide an opportunity for PhD students to have a genuine international PhD experience by spending time on both sites (in the spirit of the Monash-IITB Academy program), and
b) to foster greater research links between researchers on the two Engineering campuses

The PhD students will be enrolled in Sunway and will nominally spend 2yrs at Sunway and 1yr at Clayton. The preference is for the 2nd yr of candidature to be spent at Clayton (after the students have passed confirmation of candidature) but this is flexible depending on the project needs. The program will be marketed in Malaysia as a premium package and the PhD stipend will be higher than the normal rate during the time in Sunway. During the year in Australia, the candidates will receive the Clayton stipend of 26-27k AUD p/a. The objective is to attract the very best students from Malaysia and abroad to participate. The students must be supervised by at least one supervisor from each site.

The plan is to advertise in Malaysia around mid-2018 with the first intake anticipated to be between Aug-Oct 2018. Five scholarships have been planned in the first instance. The timing has been set in line with the academic year in Malaysia to maximise the chances of recruiting the top students.