PhD – Hydrology and Climate Risk – Greece

The Technical University of Crete offers a fully funded PhD position in an international environment, with excellent training opportunities and strong connections to practical applications, to work in the field of climate risks and flood impact in Africa, in close collaboration with leading international partners and end users. The TUC School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering is home to internationally renowned research and teaching in water resources, hydrology and hydraulics, environmental and climate engineering, and sustainable development. The successful candidate will work in the Hydrological and Hydraulic Engineering Laboratory, which works on hydrological extremes, climate change impacts, and risk assessment and management in Mediterranean and global contexts.

Duties:

As a PhD student, you will work within the framework of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network project, ‘Understanding and predicting the impacts of extreme climate events in the context of global change’, which officially begins on 1 March.

The international project consortium is coordinated by Uppsala University. You will be part of a leading cohort of young researchers studying different aspects of the impacts of extreme weather events in Europe and Africa (from public health and agriculture to socio-economic perspectives) and will have access to a comprehensive programme of training activities and research exchanges designed to enhance your career prospects in both academia and the private sector. Your work will focus on:

• Collecting and harmonising data on historical flood events and impacts in Africa from multiple existing databases on risks and impacts, scientific literature, government and NGO reports, news archives and community surveys.
• Using hydroclimatic reanalyses and modelling tools to detect, characterise and verify flood events, and identify regions with missing or inconsistent impact information.
• Integrating spatial exposure and vulnerability information, including datasets on population, economy, and land use.
• Build a robust, quality-controlled database on flood events and impacts in Africa, harmonised with administrative units including time, location, flood type, and impacts.
• Conduct trend analyses and vulnerability/resilience assessments in different African regions and socio-economic contexts and provide data to other CLIMES PhD projects on hazard modelling and risk assessment.

Requirements:

• Master’s degree (or equivalent) in Civil or Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Environmental Sciences, Geosciences, Climate Sciences, Geography or a closely related discipline, obtained before the start date.
• Solid experience in at least one of the following: hydrology/hydraulics, climate data analysis, natural hazards, GIS and geospatial analysis, statistics/data science.
• Proficiency in spoken and written English.
• Programming skills (e.g. Python, R or MATLAB) and experience in handling large data sets.
• Experience in flood risk, disaster impacts or climate risk analysis.
• Experience with African case studies or datasets, or with partners working in African contexts.
• Experience with AI/LLM for automated text mining and impact data extraction.

Benefits:

The successful candidate will be employed on a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network contract for the main three years of their doctoral studies and, if necessary, will be provided with university resources for an additional year of study. The position is temporary, full-time (100%) as a doctoral candidate at the Technical University of Crete, and consists of research, coursework and, where applicable, limited teaching and other duties. Employment will be governed by Greek labour law and the TUC’s internal regulations for doctoral candidates.

This includes:

• A gross salaryconsisting of theMSCA living allowance, a mobility allowance and, where applicable, a family allowance (for researchers who have a family as defined by MSCA rules) for the first three years.
• Full social security coverage (health insurance, pension contributions, unemployment and accident insurance) in accordance with Greek regulations.
• Full-time (100%) employment as a doctoral researcher.
• Access to training, supervision, research facilities and professional development support.
• Start date of employment (PhD): 1 September 2026.
• Location: School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Crete, Greece.

Organisation/company: Technical University of Crete.

Field of research:

Research profile: Early-stage researcher (R1).

Country: Greece.

Application deadline: 30 April 2026 – 17:00 (Europe/Athens).

More information: Euraxess.