Abstract
Abstract. The Water Informatics in Science and Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training (WISE CDT) offers a postgraduate programme that fosters enhanced levels of innovation and collaboration by training a cohort of engineers and scientists at the boundary of water informatics, science and engineering. The WISE CDT was established in 2014 with funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) amongst the universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter. The WISE CDT will ultimately graduate over 80 PhD candidates trained in a non-traditional 4-year UK doctoral programme that integrates teaching and research elements in close collaboration with a range of industrial partners. WISE focuses on cohort-based education and equips the PhD candidates with a wide range of skills developed through workshops and other activities to maximise candidate abilities and experiences. We discuss the need for, the structure and results of the WISE CDT, which has been ongoing from 2013–2022 (final year of graduation). We conclude with lessons learned and an outlook for PhD training, based on our experience with this programme.
Highlights
The global water cycle consists of a complex web of interacting physical, biogeochemical, ecological and human systems (Gleeson et al, 2020)
– Programming for Engineering, and Water Informatics in Science and Engineering (WISE) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) candidates across the cohorts appreciated the opportunity to attend a first year of courses, which is uncommon for a PhD programme in the UK, where traditional PhDs are typically based on individual research only
Lina Stein (Cohort 3) comments on the cohort benefits of the WISE CDT: “In the cohort there is a wide array of experiences and problem-solving approaches
Summary
The global water cycle consists of a complex web of interacting physical, biogeochemical, ecological and human systems (Gleeson et al, 2020). Opportunities for real-time monitoring and management are increasing dramatically; so is access to far more powerful information and communication technology (ICT) tools and devices (ICT4Water cluster, 2018) These tools enable “people as sensors” (crowdsourcing, citizen science), bringing together the skills of humans to observe and interpret with the interconnection of the Internet to enable new types of information to be crowdsourced (Seibert et al, 2019). For society to take full advantage of leading-edge technologies we need to provide training for hydroinformaticians, i.e. scientists and engineers capable of working at the interface of traditionally separate disciplines of informatics, science, and engineering to manage information and water cycles effectively (Fig. 1) (Popescu et al, 2012; Merwade and Ruddell, 2012; Makropoulos and Savic, 2019). We describe the programme, show some selected educational elements and discuss what the WISE CDT has achieved so far
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