Dear Colleagues, Macquarie University is currently offering a PhD scholarship to support a student to study Category Theory as a member of its Centre of Australian Category Theory (CoACT). This scholarship covers the full cost of tuition and provides a full-time stipend of AU$22,500pa tax exempt for 3 and a half years. Furthermore, the University supports all of its PhD students via a generous grant pool, which in mathematics typically provides support for travel to international conferences. This particular PhD studentship forms part of an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant funded project entitled “Applicable Categorical Structures”, investigators E/Prof. Ross Street, A/Prof. Dominic Verity, A/Prof. Stephen Lack and Prof. Michael Johnson (DP1094883). An overview summary of this project is provided below. Details of Macquarie's PhD scholarship program and its application process may be found at http://www.hdr.mq.edu.au/information_about/scholarships and more information about CoACT and its Australian Category Theory Seminar may be found at: http://web.science.mq.edu.au/groups/coact/ and http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/AusCat/index.html The application formalities are that applicants will need to complete a candidature/scholarship application form, which should quote the allocation reference number 2010233, and arrange for two academic referee reports to be submitted to Macquarie University's Higher Degree Research Office. In the first instance, however, students who are interested in applying for this scholarship should email Dominic Verity at dominic.verity@mq.edu.au not later than the 31st of August 2010. Regards Dom ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Project Name: Applicable Categorical Structures Project Description: We might view category theory as a discipline shaped by two dominant mathematical and philosophical themes, these being the study of internal structures and the process of categorification. The first of these encourages us to think of certain constructs called categories as being akin to universes of discourse in which mathematical structures and arguments may be formulated. The second suggests that we might fruitfully replace underlying sets of our mathematical entities themselves by certain kinds of categories and their operations and equations by functors and coherent equivalences. This project seeks to further study the applicability of these complementary views of category theory, by (a) studying the interplay between internal structures, externalisation and categorification at low dimensions in a unified framework (b) extending certain of these results to the context of higher weak category theory and (c) applying these methods to certain foundational problems in K-theory, mathematical physics and computer science. Other Important information: This is a broadly based, interdisciplinary project which would suit a student who possesses a strong interest and background in pure mathematics, mathematical physics and/or theoretical computer science. We would generally expect that applicants for this scholarship would have some background in category theory and its applications. However, depending upon the candidate this may not be a mandatory requirement. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]