A major challenge to managers and scientists today is to identify ways that oceans can provide food and other services in a sustainable way under changing climatic and socioeconomic conditions. As a changing climate and high harvesting put increased pressure on marine resources, scientists of the future need the cross-disciplinary skills to combine physical, biological, and social/economic science to give appropriate management advice. NorMER is a new Nordic Centre of Excellence, with funding from Nordforsk, on behalf of Top-level Research Initiative (TRI), and the participating institutions for 2011-2015, that will address this challenge through a unique program of primary research. 45 researches from 10 Nordic institutions will collaborate in training 15 new PhD students and 5 Postdocs through joint projects that explore the biological, economic, and societal consequences of global climate change on fisheries resources in the Nordic region, with a primary focus on the Atlantic cod.

The NorMER partnership includes teams led by Nils Chr. Stenseth at the University of Oslo, Carl Folke of the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden, Erik Bonsdorff at Åbo Adakemi University in Finland, Marko Lindroos at the University of Helsinki in Finland, Markus Meier at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute in Sweden, Guðrún Marteinsdóttir at Marine Academic Research in Iceland, Eyðfinn Magnussen at the University of Faroe Islands, Helle Siegstad at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Øyvind Fiksen at the University of Bergen in Norway, and Thomas Kiørboe at the Technical University of Denmark. Each PhD project will be supervised and based at a single institution, but will require a mandatory visit to a partner institution of up to 4 months for co-supervision (see the detailed descriptions for each project for details). The Postdoc positions are additionally required to collaborate with multiple partner institutio.

Scholarship Application Deadline: 30th March 2011

Further Scholarship Information and Application