Spending parts of your Bachelor/Master/PhD studies at UNIS?
A student who has been accepted into a Bachelor, Master, or PhD program at his/her home educational institution may apply to complete (parts of) the study (fieldwork/thesis) at UNIS. This requires a UNIS supervisor and a separate application to UNIS. The application form can be downloaded at the bottom of the page.
Admission criteria:
- Student enrolled in a bachelor, master or PhD-program at an approved higher educational institution in Norway or abroad
- The bachelor/master/PhD-project is within UNIS’ research themes
- The student plans to stay at UNIS for at least 3 months continuously
Application deadlines:
- 1 March
- 1 June
- 1 September
- 1 December
Earliest arrival is 1,5 months after the application deadline.
Available guest master student opportunities
Below is a list of available Master projects – if interested please contact the academic staff listed.
Arctic Geology:
The unique geology of Svalbard and its present-day cryosphere provide superb opportunities to study geoscience. The Arctic Geology department supervises bachelor-, master and PhD theses in geology and physical geography with a special focus on using Svalbard as a field laboratory. We do this in collaboration with all the Norwegian universities, but also with many universities around the world, so fitting to the different conditions of doing a thesis as regulated by your home university.
You will best get an overview of the specific scientific fields that we supervise within by studying the academic content and learning outcomes of the courses we offer. We recommend students to be directly involved in developing their thesis project together with us as supervisors. Therefore, please contact our scientific staff if you like to develop a bachelor, master or PhD thesis study with us. Clearly almost all of the bachelor and master students that we supervise have taken courses at UNIS and in this way got inspired to do thesis work with us as well.
Arctic Technology:
The Arctic contains large quantities of biological and mineral resources of great commercial and scientific value. Sustainable industrial development and exploitation of biological and mineral resources requires tailored technology and expert knowledge of the region. Arctic technology involves upgrading of well proven technology to suit the Arctic climate or the development of completely different and specialized technology especially adapted to the harsh environmental conditions.
Arctic Safety:
The High Arctic presents unique challenges related to environmental change, natural hazards, and remote operations. Addressing these challenges requires interdisciplinary competence in safety management, field safety, emergency preparedness, risk assessment, and climate adaptation. Arctic Safety integrates research, practical training, and operational experience to provide the knowledge and skills needed for safe and sustainable activities in Arctic environments. The field emphasizes understanding Arctic risks and developing strategies that enhance resilience, safety, and responsible decision-making for individuals, organizations, and communities operating in the north.
Arctic Biology Master projects:
Climate warming and its effect on flowering phenology of High Arctic plants
| Description | PhD Candidate Elvire E. Rikkert |
| Climate warming is shifting the flowering phenology of Arctic plants, as earlier snowmelt has led to widespread earlier flowering, which could cause a mismatch with pollinators, while the extended growing season may also favour seed ripening. Unusually warm and wet autumns are now extending the growing season even further, and appear to be driving a newly observed phenomenon, re-flowering, where species produce multiple flowering events within a single season. As re-flowering draws on resources such as buds reserved for the following year, it can potentially compromise long-term reproductive success. How widespread re-flowering is among High Arctic species, which environmental conditions drive it, and what its consequences are for reproductive success is still unknown. This project studies re-flowering in common Arctic plant species during the next growing season around Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Reproductive success would be followed both for the re-flowering event itself and for the following growing season. In addition, herbarium and citizen science records will be assessed to validate whether re-flowering is a new phenomenon. The analysis aims at understanding which species re-flower, under which temperature and moisture levels, and how this affects reproductive success within and between growing seasons. |
Arctic Geophysics Master projects:
Comparison of effects of energetic electron precipitation descriptions in atmospheric modelling
| Description | Professor Noora Partamies |
| Atmosphere and climate model WACCM was recently updated to include an input (forcing) of energetic electron precipitation, which is based on satellite measurements of electron fluxes at certain energies, parametrised as a function of magnetic activity index Ap. Other electron precipitation descriptions have been tried and tested after that, but the general conclusion is that the particle input is not producing enough odd nitrogen (NOx) in the thermosphere. Our new electron description was composed of ground-based observations solely, with the idea that this would provide better spatial and temporal resolution than a fast overpassing satellites do. The model output using this new forcing is now available and this project would compare the evolution of the mesospheric and thermospheric chemistry of the new results with already existing analysis of geomagnetic storms in the literature, for instance the storm in April 2010. The analysis aims at understanding the chemical differences caused by the two electron inputs in different species, at different height ranges and in different phases of the storms of different intensity. Previous study on April 2010 storm to be compared with |
Would the bursty precipitation of pulsating aurora include enough soft electrons that would disturb the equivalent current distribution?
| Description | Professor Noora Partamies |
| Equivalent currents are currents, which are built to match the measured magnetic disturbances on the ground. They are thus the result of current continuation and Ohm’s law. They describe approximately the divergence-free part of the ionospheric Hall currents, and their curl is then a rough estimate for the field-aligned currents in and out of the ionosphere. Pulsating aurora is known to involve a persistent contribution of high-energy electrons from the radiation belts. At the same time, an auroral emission signature is seen, which also suggests precipitation of energies less than 10 keV. According to recent theories in wave-particle interaction, in particular those of Chorus waves, shows that the waves accelerate particles within a very large energy range. Since the focus on pulsating aurora studies has been on the high energy precipitation, which may affect the neutral atmosphere, little is done on the lower-energy precipitation part. The aim of the project is thus, to investigate if this type of precipitation affects the distribution and behaviour of equivalent currents. Lists of pulsating aurora events, and tools to calculate and visualise equivalent currents, are readily available. Study on electrodynamics changes due to pulsating aurora: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009JA014683 Review on pulsating aurora: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-019-0629-3 |
Auroral omega band drift speeds
| Description | Professor Noora Partamies |
| Omega bands are known to show up in the recovery phase of a substorm and drift eastward. They are large features and claim to be rare. There are a number of case studies of these things available, and some of them estimate the eastward drift speed but there is no proper overview of the propagation behaviour. This project would look into the problem with automatic drift velocity detection by so called optical flow method, which is based on difference between 2 consecutive images. Assuming the shape of the auroral structure remains the same without too big a change in its brightness the difference gives the speed of propagation. The algorithm is called Horn-Schunck and exists in all major programming languages. Its outcome needs to be validated and investigated. An omega band event list also exists (in the paper https://www.ann-geophys.net/35/1069/2017/). The final product of omega band speeds could be compared to ionospheric convection velocities measured by SuperDARN as well as correlated with the current magnetic activity strength and solar wind driving. |
Application forms
- Application form for Bachelor students
- Application form for Master students
- Application form for PhD students