Domestic PhD Stipend Scholarship Opportunity - BloodCare Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) - Improving supportive care for patients with blood cancer

Candidates have the flexibility to align with existing CRE research initiatives or take advantage of a unique opportunity to design their own PhD project alongside our investigator team. This ensures your research directly leverages your current background while allowing you to tailor the project to your preferred methodologies, new skills you wish to develop, and your long-term career goals.

The broader program of the BloodCare CRE ( www.bloodcarecre.org ) focuses on several key pillars of supportive care. Your project can span one or more of these core areas focused on blood cancers:

• Optimising transfusion support

• Preventing and managing infection

• Investigating nutrition and the microbiome

• Improving symptom control and psychological support

To illustrate the scope, data access, and clinical impact of the CRE, candidates could choose to align with, expand upon, or pivot from existing initiatives such as:

Example 1: Big Data & Infection Risk Prediction (Stream: Infection Prevention)

• The Scope : Leverage large, linked datasets from national blood cancer registries and the National Health Data Hub (NHDH) to identify disease- and treatment-specific risk factors for healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), and opportunities for prevention. A primary focus will be evaluating the impact of vaccination protocols on infectious outcomes, assessing vaccination coverage, and estimating vaccine effectiveness.

• Potential Focus Areas: Characterising national sepsis risk using linked hospital, ICU, and immunisation data; quantifying the burden of vaccine-preventable infection and identifying opportunities to improve vaccination coverage in immunocompromised populations; and providing evidence to inform national health policy.

• Ideal For: Candidates with an interest or background in biostatistics, epidemiology, data science, or public health registry data.

Example 2: Clinical Trial & Implementation Science (Stream: IVCare Adaptive Platform Trial)

• The Scope: Embed your research within the world-first IVCare adaptive platform trial, designed to evaluate interventions to prevent Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections in patients with blood cancers.

• Potential Focus Areas: Mapping and addressing variation in clinical practice across sites; developing guidelines to better inform device selection; investigating implementation challenges to understand barriers to evidence adoption; or evaluating novel device interventions.

• Ideal For: Candidates with a background or interest in clinical trials, nursing, implementation science, or qualitative/mixed-methods research.

⚠️ Note: These projects are examples only. Candidates will have the opportunity to work with the supervisory team to co-design a project within the CRE's core pillars - transfusion support, preventing and managing infection, investigating nutrition and the microbiome and improving symptom control and psychological support.

• Generous Financial Support: Access top-tier scholarship funding (up to $46,000 p.a.) alongside dedicated financial support for conference travel, open-access publication fees, and essential project infrastructure.

• Access to Rich, World-Class Datasets & Trials: Work directly with national clinical registries, the National Health Data Hub (NHDH), and cutting-edge adaptive platform trials like IVCare, giving your research immediate real-world translational reach.

• World-Leading Collaboration: Join a vibrant, multidisciplinary network of internationally recognised biostatisticians, clinical trialists, haematologists, infectious disease specialists, and implementation scientists.

• Dynamic & Flexible Academic Culture: Benefit from flexible working arrangements (including full-time or part-time options and hybrid working) designed to support work-life balance and ongoing clinical commitments.

• A Top-Tier Research Environment: Be based at Monash University's School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at 509 St Kilda Road - a premier, highly collaborative research precinct in Melbourne with access to comprehensive professional development and methodology workshops.

Prospective applicants must satisfy Monash University's PhD entry requirements as outlined in the Monash Graduate Research Admission Procedure , including:

• Valid and current Australian work rights (Domestic applicants only).

• A bachelor's degree of at least four years in a relevant discipline, including a research thesis or project, with a minimum overall average grade equivalent to First Class Honours (H1).