The Jerusalem-Melbourne Joint PhD |

The Jerusalem-Melbourne Joint PhD (JM-JPhD) is an international research training group between The University of Melbourne, Australia, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

The University of Melbourne (UoM) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2008, renewed in 2018, to foster exchange and research collaborations. Both Universities affirmed this partnership in November 2012 with an agreement to establish the Joint Research Workshop Grants Program.

The partnership was further expanded with the development of a joint PhD agreement and the launch of the Jerusalem-Melbourne Joint PhD program (JMJPhD) in 2019. The first cohort, with a thematic focus on biomedical research, successfully recruited 4 Joint PhD candidates across two research teams. The second group of 4 projects being recruited in late 2020 includes research in veterinary parasitology and Natural Language Processing (NLP) in computational linguistics and cognitive science. All successful candidates will spend at least a year at each institution over the course of their candidature and be eligible to graduate with a jointly awarded PhD recognised with a testamur from each University.

Upcoming Jerusalem-Melbourne Joint PhD (JM-JPhD) research projects are advertised below. Please read the application guidelines before contacting the project supervisors.

Current Jerusalem-Melbourne Joint PhD (JM-JPhD) research projects, from our first cohort with candidates scheduled to commence in 2020 are listed below.

Professor Steven Prawer
Steven Prawer is the academic lead of the Jerusalem-Melbourne joint PhD program. He is a Professor of Physics in the School of Physics and Director of the Melbourne Materials Institute in the Faculty of Science. He has a world wide reputation in advanced diamond science and technology with over 30 years of experience and over 390 scientific publications. A particular focus of his research has been the merging of the areas of nanoscience and neuroscience to push the boundaries of bionic devices.

Prof Prawer co-supervises joint PhD projects with A/Prof Nir Bar-Gill from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr Alex Bahar-Fuchs
Dr Alex Bahar-Fuchs is a Senior Research Fellow – Psychiatry of Old Age in the School of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. His primary research interests focus on understanding of olfactory cognitive processes and their relevance to the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. It also include the development, evaluation and synthesis of non-pharmacological interventions aimed at primary and secondary prevention of cognitive decline and dementia, often using emerging technologies. Dr Alex Bahar-Fuchs co-supervises joint PhD projects with Dr Mor Nahum from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor Evan Bieske
Professor Evan Bieske is a Professor in the School of Chemistry, Faculty of Science. His research interests lie in the application of laser spectroscopy to the characterization of molecular ions, clusters and nanoparticles in the gas phase, and also in the properties of nanomechanical devices such as AFM cantilevers. His research has led to the development of new techniques to investigate the properties of molecules that change shape in response to light. Professor Bieske co-supervises joint PhD projects with Prof Dr Igor Schapiro from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr Lea Frermann
Lea Frermann is a Lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Systems in the Faculty of Engineering and IT, in the field of natural language processing (NLP). Her research interests focus on improving automatic understanding of long and complex texts (books, movie scripts), with help of access to common sense knowledge. She is also interested in using machine learning for a deeper understanding of human language processing, and in using such insights to improve automatic language understanding. Dr Frermann co-supervises joint PhD projects with Dr Omri Abend from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr Hinze Hogendoorn
Hinze Hogendoorn is a Senior Research Fellow at the Melbourne School of Psychological Science, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. His primary research interests lie in visual time perception. Using psychophysical, behavioral, and neuroimaging techniques, he tries to answer questions such as how time is encoded in the brain, and how the brain keeps track of time. Dr Hogendoorn co-supervises joint PhD projects with A/Prof Ayelet Landau from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr Elise Kalokerinos
Dr Elise Kalokerinos is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the Melbourne School of Psychological Science, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. Her primary research interests centre on emotion, motivation, and self-regulation. She uses multiple methods to investigate these topics, including traditional lab experiments, large-scale field surveys, and experience sampling studies conducted in daily life. Dr Kalokerinos co-supervises joint PhD projects with Prof Maya Tamir from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor Rebecca Traub
Rebecca Traub is a Professor in Veterinary Parasitology in Veterinary BioSciences at the University of Melbourne. Her main research interest is in the development and application of molecular epidemiological and diagnostic tools to unravel public health risks posed by a range of direct, food-borne and vector-borne parasitic zoonoses. Prof Traub co-supervises joint PhD projects with Dr Vito Colella from the University of Melbourne and Prof Gad Baneth from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The IRTG Coordinator team consists of:

Petra Van Nieuwenhoven
Clare Flynn

The team works with the Joint PhD program Academic Lead on operational activities, including recruitment and the end to end graduate research lifecycle processes for joint PhD candidates. Please direct all your enquiries to jointphd-admin@unimelb.edu.au.