[3.5 years of support including Home rate tuition fees plus a stipend of £19,215 per annum (2025-26 rate; 2026-27 rate to be confirmed).]

This 3.5-year PhD studentship at the University of Plymouth offers an exciting opportunity to advance our understanding of plankton biodiversity and ecosystem change using cutting-edge machine learning techniques. Hosted within Marine Research Plymouth—a collaborative partnership with the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the Marine Biological Association—the project is embedded in the UK's largest concentration of marine researchers, providing a vibrant and supportive research environment.

The project addresses a critical gap in marine biodiversity monitoring by leveraging recent advances in plankton imaging and machine learning classifiers. Plankton are vital to marine food webs and global carbon cycles, serving as sensitive indicators of environmental change and climate impacts on ocean biodiversity. Despite technological improvements in plankton imaging, these rich datasets are underutilized in biodiversity assessments and policy frameworks. This studentship aims to apply existing biodiversity policy indicators to new plankton image data, expanding datasets and directly enhancing biodiversity assessments under the UK Marine Strategy and OSPAR frameworks.

As a PhD student, you will collect plankton images using an innovative benchtop flow-through imaging sensor and integrate these with existing datasets from established platforms. You will have opportunities for field work at sea in collaboration with Cefas and to visit the University of British Columbia for instrument field testing. The project involves applying a novel machine learning image classifier to identify plankton taxa and quantify key ecological traits such as size and biovolume—traits often missing from traditional datasets but essential for robust biodiversity analyses and policy evaluation. The combined data will be used to characterize spatio-temporal ecological changes in the Northeast Atlantic.

Throughout the studentship, you will develop expertise in machine learning, plankton taxonomy, ecological trait analysis, and biodiversity indicator development. You will actively contribute to the UK and OSPAR Pelagic Habitats Expert Groups and benefit from professional development opportunities through the Plankton and Policy Research Unit and Marine Research Plymouth’s early career network.

Funding: The studentship is fully funded for 3.5 years, covering Home rate tuition fees and providing a stipend of £19,215 per annum (2025-26 rate; 2026-27 rate to be confirmed).

Eligibility: Applicants should hold a first or upper second class honours degree or a Masters qualification in ecology, marine biology, data science, environmental sciences, or related fields. Interdisciplinary backgrounds and strong quantitative skills are highly valued.

Application: The deadline for applications is 12 noon on Monday, 2nd February 2026. For informal enquiries, contact Professor Abigail McQuatters-Gollop. Apply via the University of Plymouth studentship webpage.