About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences: 

Two postdoctoral positions are now open at Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICC) at the University of Barcelona funded by the project "Theory and Phenomenology of Fundamental Interactions: Particle Physics and Unification of Forces".
Faculty members of our group include: Jorge Casalderrey-Solana, Miguel Angel Escobedo, Domènec Espriu, M.C. Gonzalez-Garcia, Federico Mescia, Jorge Russo, Jordi Salvadó, Joan Solà, Joan Soto, Josep Taron and Javier Virto.
Outstanding applicants in all related research areas will be considered.
Priority will be given to candidates in the following areas:
- Astroparticle Physics, Cosmology, Dark Energy, Axion-like particle Phenomenology.
- Gauge theories and non-perturbative methods, Conformal Field Theories, Superstring theory, Holography and Branes.
For more information about research at the ICC please visit http://icc.ub.edu
Appointments will be for a period of 2 years with a third year subject to funding availability.
The default starting date will be in the Fall 2024, but earlier starting dates can be considered.
The deadline for applications is December 1, 2023.
Applications must be done online through this link.
Applications should include:

• a CV,
• a statement of research interests,
• a list of publications,
• and the letters of recommendation from three senior physicists. The referees will receive an email with instructions on how to upload their letters. 

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to secretaria@icc.ub.edu.
Contact: Concha Gonzalez-Garcia (concha@fqa.ub.edu)

Contract financed by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) is seeking a motivated master student or last-year undergraduate student in physics or related fields.

The ICCUB is an interdisciplinary centre devoted to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics. The ICCUB Technology Unit focuses on inventing and building the ambitious and innovative instruments of the future. This involves collaborating on large projects related to particle physics experiments, space missions, astronomical facilities and others. 

The ICCUB is a centre with more than 60 long term scientists, 20 engineers and 80 postdoctoral researchers (55% international) and PhD students (30% international) offering an international and multicultural environment. The ICCUB also hosts a vibrant fundamental research program in cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics, with a strong technology unit supporting our participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.  

Job description 

The recently established Quantum Communications group of the University of Barcelona is working on the development of a solid-state entangled photon source to be used both in ground and space. 

https://quantumcomms.fqa.ub.edu/

The group is currently financed by the Planes Complementarios en Comunicaciones Cuánticas and is closely associated with the Master in Quantum Science and Technology @Barcelona (https://quantummasterbarcelona.eu/ )

We search for a highly motivated individual to join our efforts in the design, characterization and deployment of both single and entangled photon sources. 

To learn more about the research interests of the ICCUB, please follow this link. 

Tasks: 

Technical support for the characterization of the emission of quantum dots, in particular in the preparation of an experiment to detect two simultaneous photons. Support technique for printing resonators using lithography polymerization of two photons.

Requirements: 

• Knowledge in Quantum Sciences and Technologies
• Knowledge in Photonics/Optics
• MECR intermediate English level A2 certificate. 

Employment conditions: 

We offer a 10-hour contract for a period of six months with anticipated renewal for up to two additional years; this is contingent upon the availability of funds and job performance. 

Gross monthly salary will be around 600€ with 14 payments per year including social security and public healthcare benefits, covering spouse and children. 

The position is expected to begin in two months, although exceptions can be made in cases of maternity/paternity or other special circumstances.  

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement 

ICCUB offers and promotes a diverse and inclusive environment and welcomes applicants regardless of age, disability, gender, nationality, race, religion or sexual orientation (for additional information please see the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission. Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call or email secretaria@icc.ub.edu with their request. 

Application procedure: 

Documents that will be required for your application are: 

• Curriculum Vitae 
• Motivation letter 

 All applications must be submitted by email to: brunojulia@ub.edu

Deadline: 

Applications must be submitted before November 30th. 

Funding: 

This contract is part of the project Plan Complementario de Computación Cuántica, of the area Quantum Computation, within the frame of the R&D&I Complementary Plans of the Spanish Government that are part component 17 of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism. This contract is funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU (MICINN/PRTR funds) and by Generalitat de Catalunya. 

The Atomic and Nuclear Physics group at the University of Barcelona offers a postdoctoral position to work on the project “Amplitude Analysis for Exotic Hadrons”. The candidate will be supervised by Prof. Vincent Mathieu, part of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (https://icc.ub.edu/). She/he will also work in close collaboration with the members of the Exotic Hadrons Topical Collaboration (https://www.exohad.org/).

The project aims at developing and implementing dispersion relations in hadro- and photo-production of mesons. The objective is to extract the properties of exotic mesons from the COMPASS and GlueX collaborations data sets using parametrizations satisfying S-Matrix constraints.

Candidates should hold a PhD in physics, or related fields, at the starting date of the contract. They are expected to have expertise in hadronic physics.

Employment conditions:

The position is offered for one year, renewable for another year depending on the availability of funding and performance, and it is expected to begin no later than January 2024. Gross annual salary is about 32.000€ per year, depending on the experience. This includes social security and public healthcare benefits, covering spouse and children.

Application procedure and deadline:

Please fill out this link with your information and the information of two referees who will provide recommendation letters for you. Once you submit this form you will receive an email with instructions on how to upload your application materials:

• Curriculum Vitae
• List of publications
• Cover letter including research experience and interests (2 pages max).

The referees will receive an email with instructions on how to upload their letters.

Please note that your application will not be complete until you and at least one referee has uploaded the corresponding documents.

The application deadline is September 29th, 2023.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to Esther Pallarés, secretaria@icc.ub.edu.

For inquiries about the scientific aspects, please contact Vincent Mathieu, vmathieu@ub.edu.

About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences:

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2022: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colorful neighborhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Contract financed by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union - NextGenerationEU/PRTR

Job description:

The Milky Way-Gaia group offers a postdoctoral position at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB) of the University of Barcelona in the project Complex Phase Mixing in Gaia-DR3 funded by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación and by European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR granted to Dr. Teresa Antoja (https://teresaantoja.fqa.ub.edu/home). The postdoc will be part of the Gaia-UB group (https://gaia.ub.edu/) with about 25 scientists and engineers of the Gaia mission. The research of this project focuses on the dynamics of the Milky Way disc through modelling of the measurements by Gaia and WEAVE. Candidates should hold a PhD in physics, astronomy, or related fields, at the starting date of the contract. They are expected to have expertise in at least one (preferably more than one) of the topics of galactic dynamics, Milky Way, galaxy formation and evolution, galaxy simulations, analysis of large (Milky Way) surveys.

Employment conditions:

The position is offered for 1.5 year, with the possibility of 6 months of extension based on funding and performance. The contract is expected to begin around January 2024. Gross annual salary is about 30.000€, depending on the experience. This includes social security and public healthcare benefits, covering spouse and children.

Application procedure and deadline:

Applicants should provide:

- curriculum vitae

- list of publications

- letter of motivation including research experience and interests (2 pages max).

Please fill out this link with your information and the information of two referees who will provide recommendation letters for you. The referees will receive an email with instructions on how to upload their letters.

Please note that your application will not be complete until you and at least one referee has uploaded the corresponding documents.

The application deadline is October 15th.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to Esther Pallarés (secretaria@icc.ub.edu).

For inquiries about the scientific aspects, please contact Teresa Antoja (tantoja@fqa.ub.edu).

About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences:

Relevant to the offered position, researchers of the institute have broad interests, including galactic dynamics, open and globular clusters, stellar physics, star formation, models of galaxy formation and evolution, the Large Magellanic Clouds, computational astrophysics, data analysis, cloud computing.

Contract funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR.

“La Caixa” Foundation is launching a postdoctoral fellowships program in which candidates will be able to conduct a research project at accredited centres with the Severo Ochoa or María de Maeztu excellence award, Institutos de Investigación Sanitaria Carlos IIII and units evaluated as excellent by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia of Portugal.

Description of our Institute:

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) is an interdisciplinary center devoted to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics. In addition, the Institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics. Moreover, the institute is an interdisciplinary centre with more than 70 long-term scientists, 20 engineers and 80 postdoctoral researchers (55% international) and PhD students (30% international) offering an international and multicultural environment.

The ICCUB has been awarded the Maria de Maeztu distinction which recognizes our leadership and research impact. Our main lines of research, as well as the associated faculty members, can be found here.

The ICCUB is concerned about the under representation of women, as well as other underrepresented minorities in the fields of sciences of the cosmos, and therefore strongly encourages their application.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 6th World's Best Cities: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Junior Leader Fellowships Programme Description:

The Postdoctoral Junior Leader fellowships programme is aimed at hiring excellent researchers, of any nationality, who wish to continue their research career in Spain or Portugal in the STEM area (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The objectives of this programme are to foster high-quality, innovative research in Spain and Portugal and to support the best scientific talent by providing them with an attractive, competitive environment in which to conduct excellent research.

The Postdoctoral Junior Leader fellowships programme is divided into two different frames, to conduct your research project at the Institute you must apply to the Incoming programme:

• Postdoctorate Junior Leader – Incoming: 25 postdoctoral fellowships for researchers of all nationalities. They will be offered a three-year employment contract to conduct a research project at accredited centres with the Severo Ochoa or María de Maeztu excellence award, Institutos de Investigación Sanitaria Carlos IIII and units evaluated as excellent by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia of Portugal.
  For Spanish institutions, candidates must have resided in Spain less than 12 months in the last three years while for Portuguese institutions, candidates must have resided in Portugal less than 12 months in the last three years.

Requirements:

Researchers of any nationality are eligible for the Postdoctoral Junior Leader fellowships programme. In order to get accepted, candidates must meet the following requirements:

• Experience: They should have earned their doctoral degree two to seven years prior to the deadline of the call for applications. The date of the doctoral thesis defence will be understood as the date when the doctoral degree was obtained. In the cases of interruption of the research activity between the date of obtaining the doctoral degree and the call deadline, the candidate may request an extension of the period in which the doctoral degree must have been obtained.

• Geographic mobility:
  For candidates applying to Spanish centres or units: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than twelve months in the three years immediately preceding the closing date of the call. Short stays, such as holidays, will not be taken into account.

  For candidates applying to Portuguese units: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Portugal for more than twelve months in the three years immediately preceding the closing date of the call. Short stays, such as holidays, will not be taken into account.

  Special mobility condition could apply for the in the cases of interruption of the research activity or researchers who have spent time in the procedure for obtaining the refugee status under the Geneva Convention.

• Complete applications: Only candidates whose applications meet all the requirements of the call may be accepted.

Application: ”la Caixa” fellowship application website

The goal of Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowships is to enhance the creative and innovative potential of researchers holding a PhD and who wish to acquire new skills through advanced training, international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral mobility.

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships will be open to excellent researchers of any nationality. The scheme also encourages researchers to work on research and innovation projects in the non-academic sector and is open to researchers wishing to reintegrate in Europe, to those who are displaced by conflict, as well as to researchers with high potential who are seeking to restart their careers in research.

All domains of research and technological development are eligible for funding.

Fellowship types:

There are two types of fellowships:

1. European Postdoctoral Fellowships (EPF)

• EPF are open to researchers of any nationality who wish to engage in R&I projects by either coming to Europe from any country in the world or moving to Europe
• EPF must last between 12 and 24 months

2. Global Postdoctoral Fellowships (GPF)

• GPF are open to European nationals or long-term residents who wish to engage in R&I projects with organisations outside European Union and Associated Countries.
• GPF must last between 24 and 36 months (12-24 outgoing phase and 12 months mandatory return phase in Europe)

For both types:

• An additional period of up to six months can be awarded to support researchers seeking a placement at the end of the project to work on R&I projects in an organisation from the non-academic sector.
• Researchers may opt to include a worldwide secondment phase, within the overall duration of their fellowship. The secondment phase cannot exceed one third of the standard fellowship duration (EPF) or the outgoing phase (GPF)

Eligible Researchers

Researches can be of any nationality and must:

• Be in possession of PhD at the call deadline.
• A maximum of 8 years full-time research experience after the date of award of the doctoral degree.
• Not have resided or carried out their main activity in the country of the recruiting beneficiary (Spain) for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before the call deadline.

Financial Support

The salary conditions of a MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow is very competitive in relation to the average cost of living in Barcelona. It provides the following entries yearly allocated:

• Monthly living allowance: 5.080€ per month.
• Mobility allowance: 600€ per month.
• Family allowance: 660€ per month.

Application procedure

Your supervisor should be a researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona, please contact him or her and express your interest to join our institute.

The deadline is September 13, 2023 and the results are expected to be public by early 2024.

What can the ICCUB do for you?

The International Research Projects Office at the University of Barcelona offers support to applicants and guidance throughout this process: eligibility check, info sessions, feedback on the draft proposal and runs a Mentoring programme specifically designed for MSCA applicants (subject to availability).

Please contact us at your earliest convenience if you are planning on applying.

About us

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colorful neighborhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

DEADLINE Fri, 27/1/2023 

Job description:

The recently established group in Quantum Communications@UB offers a postdoctoral position to work on the project “Hardware for Quantum Communications” within the Programa de Comunicaciones Cuànticas. The candidate will be supervised by Prof. Bruno Julia Diaz, part of the Many-Body Quantum Physics with Atoms and Light group (https://manboqu.fqa.ub.edu ). She/he will also work in close collaboration with Prof. Marti Duocastella (Dynamic Optical Systems Lab,  www.ub.edu/dlight ) and Prof. Jose Maria Gomez Cama. 

The project aims at developing a novel source of entangled photons with enhanced emission efficiency. Combining theoretical with experimental work, the key idea is to use a commercial two-photon polymerization printer to grow resonating structures around quantum dots. Ideally, the emission of the dot will be monitored continuously during the process allowing us to improve the device fabrication.

Candidates should hold a PhD in physics, or related fields, at the starting date of the contract. They are expected to have expertise in quantum technologies. 

Employment conditions:

The position is offered for two years, and it is expected to begin no later than September 2023. Gross annual salary is about 33.000€ per year, depending on the experience. This includes social security and public healthcare benefits, covering spouse and children.

Application procedure and deadline:

Please fill out this form with your information and the information of two referees who will provide recommendation letters for you. 

Once you submit this form you will receive an email with instructions on how to upload your application materials:

- Curriculum Vitae

- List of publications

- Cover letter including research experience and interests (2 pages max).

The referees will receive an email with instructions on how to upload their letters. 

Please note that your application will not be complete until you and at least one referee have uploaded the corresponding documents.

Applications will be welcome until the position is filled.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to Esther Pallarés (secretaria@icc.ub.edu)

For inquiries about the scientific aspects, please contact Bruno Julia,  brunojulia@ub.edu

About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences:

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colorful neighborhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Contract financed by the European Union-NextGenerationEU-MICIIN(PRTR-C17. I1) and by the Generalitat de Catalunya.

The Gaia group (https://gaia.ub.edu/) of the Institut de Ciències del Cosmos de la Universitat de Barcelona (https://icc.ub.edu/) offers 2 PhD Positions within the Milky Way Gaia Doctoral Network “Revealing the Milky Way with Gaia” (Spain PI Carme Jordi). The Doctoral Network consists of 10 academic partners across Europe at which 12 PhD students will be researching a range of topics based on Gaia and other data.

PhD 1 description:

Title: Revealing weak substructures in the MW

Description: Precise astrometry of Gaia DR2/EDR3 has allowed the detection of many structures in the MW from clusters and star forming regions to moving groups and stellar streams, some of them known and many previously unnoticed. The data has also permitted to rule out some of the groups previously claimed. In parallel, the kinematic studies with Gaia DR3 carried out so far in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) have revealed rich complexities and substructures in its disk.

Additional information in both data sets, namely the MW and the LMC, especially ages and chemical composition, will allow us to understand the nature of the groups and substructures and put them in the context of the MW formation and evolution. The ESR will extend existing all-sky structure-finding and clustering methodologies to the third Gaia Data Release by including its new data products (information from low and high-resolution spectra like extinction and chemical composition) and complementary measurements based on ground surveys (WEAVE, OCCASO, APOGEE, LAMOST, MIRADAS, Pan-STARRS, JPLUS/JPAS, LSST, Euclid, among others). The increase of the dimensionality of the approach and the globally improved precision of Gaia DR3 will allow it to identify tiny/weak structures unnoticed so far because of the domination of the field population. This will be applied to study the completeness of the current open clusters’ catalogues and the interaction between nearby galaxies, the process of clusters disruption by the identification of their tidal tails and extended coronas, the identification of hidden subpopulations of specific types of stars like white dwarfs (to identify the very cold ones constraining the age of the populations they belong to) or RR-Lyrae (tracing substructures in distant halo streams and the Magellanic Clouds). The UB group is deeply involved in the development of such algorithms applied to Gaia DR2/EDR3/DR3 and in some ground based spectroscopic surveys like OCCASO, WEAVE and MIRADAS. The UB group also has well established collaborations with the JPLUS/JPAS and APOGEE teams and the future 4MOST project.

The PhD candidate will develop multi-dimensional methods to identify groups of stars in areas where the stellar field population dominates. Application of these methods to analyse the full sky with Gaia EDR3, DR3 and complementary data. The advantages and limitations of the methods and data will be identified, and will constitute inputs for the WP5 roadmap. Analysis of the detected structures, both in the MW and Magellanic Clouds in the context of the MW formation and evolution. Methods and results will be disseminated through peer reviewed papers.

The candidate is expected to spend 2 secondment stays in universities in France and Sweden.

Contact: Dr. Mercè Romero-Gómez (mromero (at) fqa.ub.edu)

PhD 2 description:

Title: The joint star-formation, migration, and habitability history of the Galactic disc

Description: The PhD candidate will develop a framework that allows better determination of the Galactic star-formation history and the stellar mixing rate as a function of time and position in the Galactic disc from basic observations of stellar age, metallicity, and kinematics, accounting also for non-diffusive stellar mixing.

The PhD candidate will take advantage of two things: larger samples because of Gaia and the ongoing/future spectroscopic surveys (like WEAVE and 4MOST), and novel determination of ages accounting for possible unresolved binaries (also a task for the ESR; benchmarked by asteroseismic observations from Kepler, CoRoT, K2, TESS, and eventually PLATO).

The influence of stellar migration on the Galactic Habitable Zone is a completely unexplored and exciting terrain connecting Galactic Astrophysics to exoplanet research. Using the more precise migration models obtained in the first part of the project, the PhD candidate will characterise the time evolution of the habitable-planet hosting star population around and beyond the solar vicinity. This type of study will also benefit from sophisticated comparisons to state-of-the-art cosmological Milky Way models, especially for modelling the statistical influence of cosmic radiation on potential planet host stars and for determining the occurrence rate of accreted exoplanets.

The candidate is expected to spend 2 secondment stays in universities in the Netherlands and France.

Contact: Dr. Friedrich Anders (fanders (at) fqa.ub.edu)

----------

Gross salary per year: 32000-36000€ (depending on family circumstances)

Funding: H2020 / Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions

Work location: Dept. Física Quàntica i Astrofísica, Universitat de Barcelona

Requirements: Master Degree or equivalent 

Eligibility criteria: The applicant should not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before the recruitment date — unless as part of a compulsory national service or a procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention.

Skills: Degree on Physics, Mathematics or equivalent, experience on programming, high academic grades, good communication skills, proactive attitude, good team skills.

How to apply: Send application letter, CV and list of University courses taken and transcripts of grades obtained (i.e., original transcript and also a translated version if not in English or Spanish - no need to have it notarized)  to Dr. Lola Balaguer (lbalaguer (at) fqa.ub.edu)

Application deadline: March 31st, 2023.

Additional comments: The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply. Priority will be given to people with disabilities (article 59 Law 5/2015  of October 30), according to the basic Statute of Public Employees.

About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences: 

The ICCUB is an interdisciplinary center with more than 60 long term scientists, 20 engineers and 80 postdoctoral researchers (55% international) and PhD students (30%international) offering an international and multicultural environment. The ICCUB also hosts a vibrant fundamental research program in cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics, with a strong technology unit supporting our participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information, please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

The technology unit of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) opens several positions in microelectronics design.

The ICCUB is an interdisciplinary center with more than 70 long term scientists, more than 20 engineers and 80 postdoctoral researchers and PhD students offering an international and multicultural environment. The ICCUB also hosts a vibrant fundamental research program in cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics, with a strong technology unit supporting our participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

The selected candidates will be involved in the R&D of new ground and space instruments for some of the scientific key international projects, among others: LHCb detector at CERN, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory and the High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection (HERD).

The ICCUB technology unit has an important technology transfer activity in medical imaging and single photo sensor readout technology. Some of our developments have been transferred to the industry. The selected candidates will be also involved in this activity, in coordination with international leading research centers and industries.

In particular, they will be involved in PETVISION Pathfinder Open project funded by European Innovation Council (EIC).

JOB DESCRIPTION:   

As a research engineer specialized in ASIC design there are several tasks to be performed by the candidates. These are the capacities requested for the candidates (not all of them are required for the candidate)

• Analog ASIC design:
  • definition of specifications
  • circuit design and layout
  • floor-planning
  • Sign-off
  • writing of the technical operating documentation and the simulation and test reports
• Digital ASIC design:
  • Experience in VHDL or Verilog, and TCL scripting.
  • Knowledge of the full design flow: from RTL description, to synthesis, physical implementation, post layout verification and generation of a clean GDS.
  • Low-power optimization techniques.
• Characterization:
  • Experience with lab instrumentation.
  • Testing, verification and characterization
  • Calibration & characterization
  • Participation in test beams
  • Participation in radiation qualification campaigns
• The candidate will collaborate effectively with all parts of the ASIC design: from definition to conception and until evaluation.
• The candidate must be able to work in collaboration with other engineers. 
• The selected selected candidates will work  in the follow-up of the projects, writes the documentation and publications and makes the associated presentations
• The selected candidates will advise the users (physicists and engineers directly attached to the research groups) on the operation of the circuits
• The selected candidates will collaborate with groups from different research centers and industries

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Engineering degree or equivalent with additional training and relevant experience oriented towards electronics, computer science and development of ASICs.
• Good knowledge of electronics and excellent knowledge of computer tools for ASIC design (Cadence) and simulation (spectre).
• Written and oral proficiency in English to perform all tasks described in both languages

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Good knowledge of digital and signoff tools (Cadence Genus & Innovus tools).
• A PhD in electronics will be positively considered.
• A few years of professional experience in ASIC development will be positively considered.

OTHER COMPETENCIES:

 Human capacity for conciliation and negotiation

• Ability to manage, plan and anticipate tasks before execution
• Ability to organize large international projects
• Ability to manage multiple tasks in parallel
• Ability to follow, acquire and master the latest high-tech techniques

EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS:

The position is offered for two years, with the possibility of extending them up to a total of four years. 

Gross annual salary will be commensurate with experience of the candidate and includes social security and public healthcare benefits, covering spouse and children.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE AND DEADLINE:

Applicants should provide a curriculum vitae, including education, experience, list of publications and  presentations, and a letter of motivation including research interests.

Applicants must email Dr. David Gascon Fora (dgascon@fqa.ub.edu) with the Curriculum Vitae (CV) in free format and a motivation letter.

The selection process, according to the number of applicants, will consist of curricular pre-selection and a candidate interview.

1. Curriculum vitae of the applicant. It is important to provide detail concerning tasks, technologies and tools used in previous jobs. Up to 60 points.
2. Candidate interview. In this interview, the candidate has to demonstrate problem-solving skills and technical skills, up to 40 points.

The applicant must score at least 80 points to pass the assessment.

Application will be open until positions are filled.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT:

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is an equal employment opportunity employer. The Institute of Cosmos Sciences promotes a diverse and inclusive environment and welcomes applicants regardless of age, disability, gender, nationality, race, religion or sexual orientation. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE OF COSMOS SCIENCES:

The ICCUB is an interdisciplinary center with more than 60 long term scientists, 20 engineers and 80 postdoctoral researchers (55% international) and PhD students (30%international) offering an international and multicultural environment. The ICCUB also hosts a vibrant fundamental research program in cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics, with a strong technology unit supporting our participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information, please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

The call for the recruitment program for predoctoral researchers at the University of Barcelona (PREDOCS-UB), 2022 will be open from January 16 until February 10, 2023.

The aim of this call is to select trainee predoctoral research staff and regulate the procedure for the renewal of these grants, with the aim of promoting research in UB departments and training qualified predoctoral staff in university research and teaching. This University of Barcelona (UB) programme joins other public calls for application for the purpose of strengthening and increasing the prevalence of predoctoral staff at the UB. 

Employment conditions

A maximum of a four year contract, subject to an annual assessment. Please read this document for more details.

The gross salary compensation will be 1.414,31€ per month in the first two years, 1.515,33€ per month in the third year and 1.894,16€ per month in the fourth year (these amounts have been calculated in December 2022, and they can change according to the Law). For more information, please refer to this document.

Requirements

Applicants must meet the following requirements prior to the deadline:

• The candidate must be enrolled or accepted on a doctoral programme of the UB. Another possibility is that they will be able to be enrolled on the doctoral programme at the time of signing the contract.
• Not in possession of a doctoral degree, and they have not defended a doctoral thesis
• An average grade of 6.5 or above in the academic transcript, between the bachelor's degree and master's degree
• Applicant must not have defended their doctoral thesis
• Applicant should not have a contract in force of these types PREDOCS UB, FI or FI-SDUR at the time of signing the contract
• Applicant should not have had a predoctoral contract moret han four years
• Applicant must be supported by a researcher at the UB, who will be the thesis supervisor.
• The thesis supervisor must fulfil the following requirements: 
  • has an ORCID identifier entered into the GREC CV
  • be part of a competitive ongoing research project

Application Procedure

1. Those interested must fill in the application, attach the corresponding documentation and confirm the submission of the form, which can be accessed through the following website.

In addition, the form published on the Banco Santander platform must be filled in: http://app.becas-santander.com/program/becas-santander-investigacion-convocatoria-predocs-ub-2022 Students who have applied for the grant but have not completed the Banco Santander form will be excluded from the call. Likewise, those who only fill in the application through Banco Santander will be excluded.

Deadline

Please submit your applications by February 10th 2023. Remember that you must submit your application to Banco Santander's website and the UB's website.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

• PREDOCS-UB website

Job description:

The recently established group in Quantum Communications@UB is hiring an engineer to work on the project “Hardware for Quantum Communications” within the Programa de Comunicaciones Cuànticas. The candidate will be supervised by Prof. Bruno Julia Diaz, part of the Many-Body Quantum Physics with Atoms and Light group (https://manboqu.fqa.ub.edu). They will also work in close collaboration with Prof. Marti Duocastella (Dynamic Optical Systems Lab, www.ub.edu/dlight) and Prof. Jose Maria Gomez Cama. 

The project aims at developing a novel source of entangled photons with enhanced emission efficiency. Combining theoretical with experimental work, the key idea is to use a commercial two-photon polymerization printer to grow resonating structures around quantum dots. Ideally, the emission of the dot will be monitored continuously during the process allowing us to improve the device fabrication.

Candidates should hold a degree in engineering,  physics, or related fields, at the starting date of the contract. They are expected to have expertise in quantum technologies.   

Employment conditions:

The position is offered for two years, and it is expected to begin no later than September 2023. Gross annual salary ranging from 25.000€ about 33.000€ per year, depending on the experience. This includes social security and public healthcare benefits, covering spouse and children.

Application procedure and deadline:

Please fill out this form with your information and the information of two referees who will provide recommendation letters for you. 

Once you submit this form you will receive an email with instructions on how to upload your application materials:

- Curriculum Vitae

- List of publications

- Cover letter including research experience and interests (2 pages max).

The referees will receive an email with instructions on how to upload their letters. 

Please note that your application will not be complete until you and at least one referee have uploaded the corresponding documents.

The application deadline is January 27th, 2023. 

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to Esther Pallarés (secretaria@icc.ub.edu)

For inquiries about the scientific aspects, please contact Bruno Julia,  brunojulia@ub.edu

About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences:

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colorful neighborhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Contract financed by the European Union-NextGenerationEU-MICIIN(PRTR-C17. I1) and by the Generalitat de Catalunya.

Job description:

The recently established group in Quantum Communications@UB is hiring a Master student to work on the project “Hardware for Quantum Communications” within the Programa de Comunicaciones Cuànticas. The candidate will be supervised by Prof. Bruno Julia Diaz, part of the Many-Body Quantum Physics with Atoms and Light group (https://manboqu.fqa.ub.edu ). They will also work in close collaboration with Prof. Marti Duocastella (Dynamic Optical Systems Lab,  www.ub.edu/dlight ) and Prof. Jose Maria Gomez Cama. 

The project aims at developing a novel source of entangled photons with enhanced emission efficiency. Combining theoretical with experimental work, the key idea is to use a commercial two-photon polymerization printer to grow resonating structures around quantum dots. Ideally, the emission of the dot will be monitored continuously during the process allowing us to improve the device fabrication.

Candidates should hold a degree in engineering,  physics, or related fields, at the starting date of the contract. They are expected to have expertise in quantum technologies.   

Employment conditions:

The position is offered for two years, and it is expected to begin no later than September 2023. The candidate is expected to start working on his/her PhD in the group. Gross annual salary ranging from 18.000€ about 20.000€ per year, depending on the experience. This includes social security and public healthcare benefits, covering spouse and children.

 Application procedure and deadline:

Please fill out this form with your information and the information of two referees who will provide recommendation letters for you. 

Once you submit this form you will receive an email with instructions on how to upload your application materials:

- Curriculum Vitae

- List of publications

- Cover letter including research experience and interests (2 pages max).

The referees will receive an email with instructions on how to upload their letters. 

Please note that your application will not be complete until you and at least one referee have uploaded the corresponding documents.

The application deadline is January 27th, 2023. 

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to Esther Pallarés (secretaria@icc.ub.edu)

For inquiries about the scientific aspects, please contact Bruno Julia,  brunojulia@ub.edu

About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences:

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colorful neighborhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Contract financed by the European Union-NextGenerationEU-MICIIN(PRTR-C17. I1) and by the Generalitat de Catalunya.

The ICCUB, Unit of Excellence María de Maeztu, was awarded this recognition for the second time by the Spanish Government in 2020, as a center with a highly competitive strategic research programme in the frontiers of knowledge. Thanks to this recognition, we have the opportunity to offer a PhD grant funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ESF+”

Description:

The recent advances in the preparation and control of ultracold atomic gases have fostered the appearance of a specific subfield termed atomtronics, which is aimed at the development of technological applications based on atomic matter waves. Its first steps are mainly pursuing successfully-applied theories from the fields of quantum optics and electronics, but also exploiting the ability of degenerate quantum gases to simulate other complex quantum systems.

In the current project, we will work within the Bose-Hubbard framework to extend previous studies on tunneling dynamics with contact interacting atoms in small quantum circuits, to atoms with dipole-dipole interaction.

We will exploit the long range and anisotropic character of the dipolar interaction to propose atomtronic devices. We will start with the smallest unit circuit and extent the study to different coupling configurations. We will investigate the entanglement properties, dynamics, such as quantized vortices, as well as transport properties in dipolar quantum circuits.

The student will have two supervisors, Dr. Montserrat Guilleumas and Dr. Bruno Juliá Díaz

Requirements:

Applicants may be all those who are enrolled or admitted to a doctoral program for the 2022/2023 academic year, at the time of the application submission. Applicants may also be all those people who, even though at the time of the application submission are not enrolled or admitted to a doctoral program, they will be on the date the contract is formalized, in accordance with article 18.

Applications must be submitted online through this link of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación from January 12th until January 26, 2023 at 2:00PM CET. To request the present research project please use the following reference: CEX2019-000918-M-20-2.

Employment conditions:

The minimum salary that researchers must receive will be €17,222 gross per year for the first
year, €18,452 for the second year and €23,065 for the third and fourth year. 

You will also get an additional funding of €6.860 that you will be able to spend on tuition or research visits, for example. More information, at the article 7.

The contract will be for a maximum of four years.

More information here: https://www.aei.gob.es/convocatorias/buscador-convocatorias/ayudas-contratos-predoctorales-formacion-doctores-2022-0

Contact:  Montserrat Guilleumas Morell (muntsa@icc.ub.edu)

About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences:

The ICCUB is an interdisciplinary center with more than 60 long term scientists, 20 engineers and 80 postdoctoral researchers (55% international) and PhD students (30%international) offering an international and multicultural environment. The ICCUB also hosts a vibrant fundamental research program in cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics, with a strong technology unit supporting our participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information, please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

The ICCUB, Unit of Excellence María de Maeztu, was awarded this recognition for the second time by the Spanish Government in 2020, as a center with a highly competitive strategic research programme in the frontiers of knowledge. Thanks to this recognition, we have the opportunity to offer a PhD grant funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ESF+”

Description:

The search for new particles and interactions beyond the Standard Model, able to solve the current fundamental problems in our understanding of the workings of the universe, has evolved significantly in the last 13 years of LHC physics. There is now an increasingly motivated case to search for new heavy particles in precision low-energy experiments, which can be studied in full generality within the framework of an Effective Field Theory (EFT). When hypothetical new particles are heavier than the Electroweak (EW) scale, there is one such EFT that describes in full generality all particle-physics processes with “low” center-of-mass energies far below the EW scale. This includes most of the experimental data we have today: lepton and hadron decays, electric and magnetic dipole moments, GeV-scale collisions, and particle properties, including neutrino masses and mixings. This EFT is also relevant for theories with an intrinsic heavy physical scale, such as axion models, as has been discussed recently. This EFT is called the “Low Energy EFT”, or LEFT.

This project is a course of action towards the full construction of the LEFT at the second order in the loop (quantum) expansion, the corresponding software implementation, and the phenomenological study of real data to a novel level of precision. This project will be supervised by Dr. Javier Virto. A strong effort will be made to apply the results to all areas of particle physics where measurements at energies below the EW scale are relevant, looking for horizontal collaborations within the ICCUB.

During the PhD period, the student will participate in Schools and Workshops to strengthen his/her background, and will be encouraged to present the results of the research at international conferences. The fellow is expected to learn: i) Performing theoretical and computational high-quality research; ii) Participating in the preparation of manuscripts for publication and presentations at scientific conferences.

Requirements:

Applicants may be all those who are enrolled or admitted to a doctoral program for the 2022/2023 academic year, at the time of the application submission. Applicants may also be all those people who, even though at the time of the application submission are not enrolled or admitted to a doctoral program, they will be on the date the contract is formalized, in accordance with article 18.

Applications must be submitted online through this link of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación from January 12th until January 26, 2023 at 2:00PM CET. To request the present research project please use the following reference: CEX2019-000918-M-20-3.

Employment conditions:

The minimum salary that researchers must receive will be €17,222 gross per year for the first
year, €18,452 for the second year and €23,065 for the third and fourth year. 

You will also get an additional funding of €6.860 that you will be able to spend on tuition or research visits, for example. More information, at the article 7.

The contract will be for a maximum of four years.

More information here: https://www.aei.gob.es/convocatorias/buscador-convocatorias/ayudas-contratos-predoctorales-formacion-doctores-2022-0

Contact: Federico Mescia (mescia@icc.ub.edu)

About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences:

The ICCUB is an interdisciplinary center with more than 60 long term scientists, 20 engineers and 80 postdoctoral researchers (55% international) and PhD students (30%international) offering an international and multicultural environment. The ICCUB also hosts a vibrant fundamental research program in cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics, with a strong technology unit supporting our participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information, please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

This PhD project aims at building quantum machine learning algorithms to study the structure of atomic nuclei and to describe their interaction with dark matter particles. The nature of dark matter is one of the main open puzzles in modern physics. While all evidence for dark matter relies on astrophysical observations, several international collaborations aim to detect dark matter particles in laboratories by measuring their scattering off atomic nuclei. Experimental analyses demand a complete modelling of how dark matter interacts with nuclei. The outcome of this project is precisely to simulate nuclei using quantum machine learning techniques and consistently incorporate nucleus-dark-matter interactions in the model. The outcomes will be key to unveil the nature of dark matter once it is detected. 

The project will be hosted by the Hadronic, Nuclear and Atomic Group (HadNucAtUB) at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICC-UB). The Group's expertise covers many-body techniques to describe strongly interacting nuclear, hadron and atomic quantum systems. In this project, you will work alongside Drs Arnau Rios and Javier Menéndez. Dr Rios has pioneered the use of machine learning techniques to solve quantum many-body nuclei, and Dr Menéndez is one of the world leaders in the study dark matter interactions with nuclei. The HadNucAtUB Group has a long tradition of PhD supervision; hosts an active seminar program, and PhD candidates at ICCUB have access to a series of engaging activities including conferences, colloquia and outreach events.  This project involves research at the cutting edge of several fields, including nuclear, particle physics and astrophysics. ICCUB is unique in that it actively combines all these fields in a single institute.

Job position description

You will join the HadNucAtUB group at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) to develop innovative theoretical methods at the frontier of current research. This will allow you to describe the interaction of one of the most promising candidates for dark matter particles, WIMPs, with atomic nuclei. You will calculate this from first principles, based on the fundamental theory of the strong interaction, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), and on the interaction of WIMPs with the fundamental Standard Model fields, quarks and gluons. This has been challenging in the past due to the difficulty to solve QCD at low energies, the complexity of strongly correlated atomic nuclei, and because the interactions of dark matter with quarks and gluons are not known. At ICCUB, we are in a unique position to tackle these challenges. You will use techniques, including effective field theory, to describe nuclear interactions and also to organize consistently the possible interactions of dark matter particles with nucleons; you will learn quantum many-body theory, to describe atomic nuclei; and finally, you will become familiar with high-performance computing, to generate different sets of simulations. All of these will be used as input in a machine learning environment that will provide a direct connection between the nucleon-nucleon interaction, the coupling of dark matter particles with nucleons, and the nuclear responses expected to be observed at world leading experiments.

This PhD project will create a new state-of-the-art model to predict the nuclear response observed at direct dark matter detection searches, starting from the most basic information on nuclear interactions. Combined with an eventual measurement, the results will be used to pin down the nature of dark matter. All in all, the project will provide candidates with a unique blend expertise at the interface between nuclear science, astroparticle physics and artificial intelligence techniques.

More information:

Group leader 

Dr. Arnau Rios Huguet
arnau.rios@icc.ub.edu 

Research product / Research group 

Arnau Rios' personal website 

https://sites.google.com/view/arnaurios/home

Website for the Institute of Cosmos Sciences-UB

http://icc.ub.edu/

Hadronic, Nuclear and Atomic Physics Group Website at ICC

http://icc.ub.edu/research/research_areas/nuclear_physics

twitter feed of the ICCUB

https://twitter.com/ICC_UB

twitter feed of the Hadronic, Nuclear and Atomic Physics group at ICCUB 

https://twitter.com/HadNucAtUB

twitter feed of Dr Arnau Rios Huguet 

https://twitter.com/RiosArnau

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

What sets the stage for the formation of rocky planets, potential hosts of life in the universe? Planets emerge from dusty gaseous disks around newborn stars within stellar nurseries, clouds of cold interstellar gas containing thousands to millions of solar masses. To understand ab initio the formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks, we need a computational framework that captures the complex environment of star-forming clouds, including the coupling of turbulence, magnetic fields, stellar radiation, gravity and dust dynamics over a vast range of scales.

The project is composed of two parts (from large to small scales):

1) Simulations of star-forming clouds, to achieve a realistic description of initial and boundary conditions for a large number of young stars and their circumstellar disks.

2) Simulations of dust evolution in circumstellar disks, to study the transport and evolution of dust grains, self-consistently coupled with the gas dynamics.

These are challenging multi-scale and multi-physics computational problems, requiring state-of-the-art massively parallel codes and large supercomputing allocations. Our group is uniquely positioned to tackle these problems, because of the early adoption of the exa-scale hydrodynamic code DISPATCH, developed by our collaborators in Copenhagen, and of our proven track record as awardees of very large time allocations in some of the fastest supercomputing systems. We have pioneered the study of star formation, as well as of the dynamics of dust grains, in the context of interstellar-medium turbulence.

This project will be developed in close collaboration with the computational astrophysics group at the University of Copenhagen. The group in Barcelona will be composed by Prof. Padoan and Dr. Pelkonen (and one more postdoc that we are currently recruiting). The main collaborators in Copenhagen will be Prof. Nordlund and Prof. Haugbølle. We will also collaborate with Prof. Pan, at Sun Yat-sen University, China.

Job position description

A candidate to undertake this project should have a keen interest in fundamental astrophysical processes, a demonstrated aptitude for the development and adoption of numerical codes, and a steadfast motivation to set a new state-of-the-art in the fields of star and planet formation, with seminal and transformational contributions.

Though not a strict prerequisite, expertise in hydrodynamics, plasma physics, turbulence theory and interstellar radiative processes is desirable. Expertise in computer-code development would also be beneficial.

The bulk of the code development and some of the numerical simulations needed for this project will be near completion by the starting time of the project. The student may lead the development of specific code modules and/or the set up of numerical simulations as well as the analysis of their results. She/he will also collaborate in the preparation of supercomputing proposals and will be the leading author of at least two publications per year in the second and third year of the project. The student will attend international conferences, workshops and focused schools on computational methods. She/he will spend part of the time with our collaborators at the University of Copenhagen.

Because of the multidisciplinary nature of this project, requiring expertise in interstellar medium physics, star formation, magneto-hydrodynamics and computational methods, the student is expected to interact with different groups at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona and at other research centers. Within our Institute, the student will interact with observational astronomers specialized in the study of star-forming regions and circumstellar disks. Among the international contacts, and besides our collaborators in Copenhagen, the student will also interact with researchers from the University of Helsinki (implementation of radiative transfer codes) and the Max Planck Institute of Munich (chemistry of protoplanetary disks).

More information:

Group leader 

Prof. Paolo Padoan
ppadoan@icc.ub.edu 

Research product / Research group 

Prof. Padoan’s personal website 

https://www.ub.edu/starformation/

The DISPATCH code website.

https://www.astro.ku.dk/~aake/dispatch/overview/index.html

Website of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences-UB

http://icc.ub.edu/ 

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

We are currently entering the so-called second quantum revolution, where the high control of nature at the smallest scales is allowing us to build a fantastic set of new technology based on quantum mechanics. Among the many open fronts, a fascinating one is the possibility of producing human taylor made new materials with exoctic quantum properties, e.g. new superfluids.

There is important experimental progress in the field of ultradilute quantum gases in the last few years, in particular, in the realization of ultradilute quantum liquids and dipolar gases. Ultracold atomic systems are a perfect testbed for quantum theories for three main reasons:

 (i) They are extremely pure and defect free

(ii) They are highly controllable in terms of the interactions between atoms

(iii) The trapping potentials can be custom made, i.e. lattices, 1D systems, etc.

Recently, quantum ultradilute liquids have been experimentally created in the experimental group of Prof. Tarruell at ICFO (Spain) [1], featuring densities that are eight orders of magnitude more dilute as compared to the usual ones. Such many-body systems are self-bound, akin to liquid drops or nuclei. It is of great interest to study their properties and to predict the possible existence of such ultradilute liquids in other systems, i.e. in lattice-trapped atoms [2,3]. In another important recent experiment in the group of Prof. Lev (Stanford), a topological pumping mechanism has been experimentally produced in dysprosium gases trapped in 1D systems [4]. Interestingly, in this case, the atoms feature long-range dipolar interactions, opening the possibility of building quantum simulators of materials featuring exotic quantum phases.

[1] C. R. Cabrera, et al., Science 359, 301 (2018).

[2] I Morera, et al., Phys. Rev. Res. 2 (2), 022008 (2020).

[3] I Morera, et al., Phys. Rev. Letts. 126 (2), 023001 (2021).

[4] Wil Kao, et al., Science 371, 296 (2021).

Job position description

The research project aims at providing an accurate ab initio description by means of state-of-the-art Montecarlo and Tensor networks tools, combined with analytical tools and exact diagonalization calculations. The ICCUB group has ample experience in using tensor networks, exact diagonalization and analytical tools. The project will be cosupervised by Prof. Astrakharchik, a long-term collaborator of the group, currently on a one-year stay in the group, who is a world expert in Monte Carlo methods applied to many-body quantum systems. The research group is currently composed of five senior members, three visiting professors, one postdoc, and two PhD students.

The main objectives of this work are:

●       Theoretically study the physical properties of state-of-the-art exotic quantum fluids produced in ultracold atomic laboratories worldwide.

●       Learn and apply the Tensor networks and Montecarlo techniques to study many-body quantum systems, in particular exotic quantum liquids and low-dimensional quantum many-body systems.

The fellow will join the Quantum Technologies area of the ICCUB and will participate actively in our Quantum Technologies meetings and seminars. The student will join our network of international collaborators.

During the PhD period, the student will participate in Schools and Workshops to strengthen his/her background, and will be encouraged to present the results of the research at international conferences. The fellow is expected to learn: i) Performing theoretical and computational high-quality research; ii) Participating in the preparation of manuscripts for publication and presentations at scientific conferences.

More information:

Group leader 

Prof. Bruno Julia Diaz
brunojulia@ub.edu 

Research product / Research group 

Many-body quantum physics group 

manboqu.fqa.ub.edu

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

The Gaia mission of ESA is providing extensive catalogues with an unprecedented amount of data of extremely high precision. The recent third release (DR3), with about 1.8 billion stars, includes more radial velocities and astrophysical parameters, constituting the ideal dataset to study the structure and dynamics of the Milky Way (MW).

The Gaia data has been revolutionary in several aspects about our Galaxy. Firstly, Gaia has unveiled a large list of new stellar clusters and has characterized better the known ones. These stellar aggregates trace the young and intermediate-age component of the Galaxy. Secondly, the measurements of the phase space coordinates of many stars in the MW disc probe the forces acting on the Galaxy. Phase space substructures discovered by Gaia show that the MW is still recovering from past perturbations probably caused by the approaches of the Sagittarius dwarf Galaxy, while it may also be affected by the forces from the central bar and the spiral arms.

Disentangling the effects of these processes (internal and external) is crucial to uncover the exact history and evolution of the MW. What is the role of each of these mechanisms? Is one of them dominating? Where and in which periods of the MW life? Are these processes interfering with each other? The objective of the project is to establish the impact of the different mechanisms that act on the Galaxy disc including the bar, the spiral arms and the interaction with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy.

The GaiaUB team (4 staff, 8 postdocs, 4 PhD, and 8 engineers) has a leading role in Gaia at the highest technological, scientific and management levels, as well as in the scientific and technical building of WEAVE. On the technical side, the Gaia group is expert on scientific HPC, Big data, massive catalogue statistics and analysis, and performs research in Galactic fields including dynamics, open clusters and the Large Magellanic Clouds. We have weekly science group meetings and a weekly journal club.

Job position description

In addition to Gaia data from DR3 and DR4 (2025-2026), data from the large spectroscopic surveys from the ground will soon provide kinematic and chemical data for stars that are too faint for Gaia to measure. We aim to explore these new data (Gaia, WEAVE@WHT, 4MOST@VISTA) to study the evolution of our Galaxy.

The student will analyze these new catalogues that will cover regions of the Galaxy never explored before with these large amounts of data and such precision (e.g., end of the bar, outermost parts of the disc, where different processes might be dominating).  The student will also explore the whole set of stellar clusters. Most of the clusters have determined ages and can help to date the different effects occurring to the MW disc. In addition, the clusters allow the understanding of the mechanisms of their formation and disruption, and their contribution to the disc of the MW and its chemo-dynamical history.

The PhD will be carried out with the Gaia group at the ICCUB. Our group has long experience in the design, development, operation, archive and data exploitation of the mission. The student will also benefit from the interaction with the software engineering group at the ICCUB Technological Unit in order to develop and utilize Big Data and Data Mining tools to take full advantage of the amount and unique quality of the Gaia data; for this purpose, we will develop data mining algorithms and probabilistic (hierarchical Bayesian) models. The work in the PhD will combine the advanced data analysis and the scientific exploitation of the Gaia data and related surveys. The student will be formed in Data Science and data modelling.

The PhD student will create strong collaborations by being integrated in the international network of the team (e.g., DPAC consortium with 450 scientist and engineers, WEAVE science team, MW-Gaia COST and REG networks).

More information:

Group leader 

Prof. Xavier Luri Carrascoso
xluri@icc.ub.du 

Research product / Research group 

Web page of the Gaia group at the ICCUB 

https://gaia.ub.edu/

X. Luri page at Gaia site

https://gaia.ub.edu/?page_id=3176

Gaia group site

https://gaia.ub.edu/

Relevant paper

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0510-7

Relevant paper

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018A%26A...616A...9L/abstract

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

The recent discovery of gravitational waves (GW) has shown that most of the detected merging compact binaries were black holes more massive than 20 solar masses. This finding has opened new questions about the progenitors and formation channels for these systems. One of the possible ways to create such compact massive binaries is through the so-called common envelope evolution, when both stars end up sharing a common gaseous layer called the common envelope. The gravitational drag of the stars inside this envelope contributes to its ejection at the expense of tightening the binary. This ejection can be observed as a bright transient source (similar to a supernova) appearing in the night sky. Eventually, the binary components can explode as supernovae, resulting in high-energy phenomena and ultimately becoming GW sources.

This project aims to use data from the Gaia ESA mission to find and characterize binary systems in our galaxy undergoing common envelope evolution, and to explore how the envelope is ejected using multi-wavelength observations of their outbursts. On the one hand, detailed follow-up campaigns will be carried out to determine the physical properties of the systems. On the other hand, comparison of the number of these systems with predictions from binary populations will provide constraints on the most relevant physics for the phases of unstable mass transfer, and envelope ejection.

The student will join the expanding research group led by Dr. Nadejda Blagorodnova, expert in astrophysical transient events, and will become a member of international collaborations associated to time-domain surveys (led by the USA and The Netherlands) and the GW LIGO-Virgo collaboration. In the Department of Quantum Physics and Astrophysics, the student will interact with experts on stellar populations with the Gaia ESA mission, and the members of the gravity and GW group in the interpretation of the results of the observations.Job position description

One of the key aspects for the job position will be to establish a strong knowledge about time-domain surveys, which is a very dynamic field of research that is expected to grow within the next few years. The imminent start of operations of new large time-domain surveys will offer endless opportunities to discover new transient and variable phenomena.

The identification of suitable common envelope candidate systems will be achieved with the combined analysis of large datasets containing astrophysical properties of the stellar sources (provided by the Gaia ESA catalogues) and their time evolution, which will be obtained from optical and near-infrared time-domain survey catalogues. The student will carry out the analysis of these datasets using distributed parallel computing resources, and employ machine learning techniques to train the algorithms which will allow us to identify past events, and predict the ones that may occur soon.  In addition, the student will also learn photometric and spectroscopic observational techniques in optical and near-infrared wavelengths, which will allow him/her to complement the catalogue data with new observations, shedding light on the physical processes involved in common envelope evolution and its role for the creation of GW sources.

To this end, the student will also broaden the knowledge on stellar binary evolution to interpret the nature and characteristics of the observed systems. Close collaboration with experts in the theory of binary evolution and common envelope will provide further training opportunities in this field. The combined expertise in observational techniques, analysis of large time-domain data, and stellar evolution will put the candidate in an excellent position to further pursue a research career.

More information:

Group leader 

Dr. Nadejda Blagorodnova Mujortova
nblago@fqa.ub.edu 

Research product / Research group 

Web site containing the bio of the PI and the description of the broader project scope 

https://nblago.github.io/

Gaia ESA project. The student will be working with the latest catalogue, which contains astrophysical data on nearly two billion sources

https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia

BlackGEM time domain survey. The student will become part of the collaboration, and will have privileged access to the data

https://astro.ru.nl/blackgem/

Zwicky Transient Facility time-domain survey. The data from this survey (operating since 2018) will be used in the analysis of the time evolution and discovery of systems

https://www.ztf.caltech.edu/

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

Gravitational waves (GWs) provide a new window on our Universe. The vast majority of the GW detections by the LIGO-Virgo interferometers are from binary black holes (BBHs). The origin of these BBHs is an open question: they may have a cosmological origin and be part of the dark matter in the Universe. Alternatively, they have an astrophysical origin and formed from binary massive stars, or in dynamical interactions in dense stellar systems such as globular clusters (GCs).

 This project aims to understand the contribution of dynamically formed BBH mergers. Understanding this is of vital importance to understand the nature of BBHs, but it is challenging because the BBH properties and merger rate in this dynamical channel depend sensitively on the unknown initial properties of GCs that formed between now and more than 10 Gyr ago. You will constrain the contribution of the dynamical channel by comparing population models of GC evolution and BBH mergers to observations of Milky Way GCs and use the fact that BHs in GCs affect their observable properties and the stellar escape rate from GCs. You will exploit data from the Gaia space telescope and related surveys such as WEAVE to chart the demographics of BHs in both dissolved and surviving GCs.

 The ICCUB is a full member of the Virgo collaboration and actively involved in Gaia (PI Carme Jordi) and the WEAVE survey, giving you access new data and analysis allowing you to work on the forefront of GW sand Milky Way research. You will join the enthusiastic Virgo and Gaia research groups of the ICCUB who organize weekly science meetings, journal clubs and seminars. You will also benefit from scientific collaborations with various ICCUB staff in the areas of star formation (Paolo Padoan), galaxy formation (Chervin Laporte, Teresa Antoja), cosmology (Licia Verde, Jordi Miralda) and black holes (Cristiano Germani, Jaume Garriga). Finally, you will be part of international collaborations with groups in Europe, Canada and the US.

Job position description

In this PhD project you will model the evolution of globular cluster (GC) populations in different galaxy types, with a particular focus on the Milky Way. You will make predictions for the present-day structure and kinematics of GCs, their distribution in the galaxy, and the distribution of the escaped stars in the galaxy. You will compare these to observations of GCs and field stars that escaped from surviving and dissolved GCs. All of these observables are sensitive to the details of the black hole (BH) populations in the GCs, so astronomical observations can be used to constrain BH dynamics.

 The research group at ICCUB - led by Prof Mark Gieles - developed an ultra-fast code for simulating the evolution of GCs and their BH populations, enabling the exploration of the parameter space of initial properties of GCs. This will be used to model GC populations and chart the demographics BHs in GCs, now and in the past.

These population models are then combined with fast models for the evolution of the BBHs within the GCs to forward model the rate and properties of BBH mergers. The results will provide insights in both the evolutionary history of each GC and its BH population as well as the resulting BBH merger rates, constrained by observational data. The results for the Milky Way GC population are then extrapolated to compute the BBH merger rate of all GCs in the Universe across cosmic time. The predictions include merger rate as a function of redshift, BH masses, mass ratios and the distribution of orbital eccentricities. These will be compared to gravitational wave (GW) data of BBH mergers in the ongoing LIGO-Virgo observing runs, to provide tight constraints on the fraction of all BBH mergers that originate from the dynamical channel. This project also sheds light on the parameters describing the initial conditions of GCs, thereby opening to door to use GWs to constrain star and cluster formation in the early Universe.

More information:

Group leader 

Prof. Mark Gieles
mgieles@icc.ub.edu 

Research product / Research group 

Pi description 

https://www.icrea.cat/Web/ScientificStaff/mark-gieles-296018

ICCUB participation in Virgo

http://icc.ub.edu/research/key_projects/virgo

ICCUB participation in Gaia

http://icc.ub.edu/research/key_projects/gaia

paper presenting a model for binary black hole mergers from globular clusters and a comparison to the latest catalogue of gravitational wave sources.

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020PhRvD.102l3016A/abstract

recent paper on the inference of a large black hole population in a Galactic globular cluster from its tidal tails

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021NatAs...5..957G/abstract

recent paper demonstrating how the mass of a black hole population can be inferred from observations of the globular cluster 47 Tuc.

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020MNRAS.491..113H/abstract

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

Our ability to detect gravitational waves (GW) is reshaping the way we perceive the Universe. This was made possible by a planet-scale multidisciplinary effort, combining experimental devices of unprecedented precision, and state of the art modeling and data analysis techniques.

 On the modeling front, a crucial aspect is the fast generation of accurate enough templates for the expected signals. In turn, this relies on the calibration provided by Numerical Relativity, i.e. the fully fledged simulation of Einstein's equations.

 While the current modeling techniques are to some extent sufficient for the current detectors, the third generation of detectors (LISA, Einstein Telescope) increased sensitivity will pose much stronger accuracy requirements on the approximate models used for data analysis.

 The ICCUB is a full member of the Virgo and soon to join the Einstein Telescope collaboration, so you will work on the forefront of GW research. You will join the enthusiastic Virgo and Einstein Telescope research groups of the ICCUB who organize weekly science meetings, journal clubs and seminars. You will also benefit from scientific interactions with various ICCUB staff in the areas of Cosmology (Licia Verde, Jordi Miralda), Black Holes (Cristiano Germani, Jaume Garriga) and High Energy Physics (Roberto Emparan, David Mateos, Tomeu Fiol), star formation (Paolo Padoan), and galaxy formation (Chervin Laporte, Teresa Antoja). Finally, you will also be involved in international collaborations with groups in Italy, Germany and the UK.

Job position description

This project seeks to upgrade the accuracy and generality of the current state of the art analytic models for waveform generation. To this end, the student will perform Numerical Relativity simulations of black hole binaries, focusing on precessing, eccentric binaries, which are currently poorly described by analytic models. Moreover, as a member of the Virgo and Einstein Telescope collaborations, the student will liaise with data analysts across the board, in order to understand the current capabilities of the models and future requirements. 

The desired outcome of the project is the improvement of one or more approximate models of black hole binary coalescence in a way compatible with the new generation detectors expected sensitivity.

Essential skills: basic theoretical aspects of General Relativity, such as black hole geometries, physics of gravitational waves; basic programming: Python

Desirable skills: advanced theoretical aspects of General Relativity, such as ADM decomposition, conserved quantities in gravity; Machine Learning; advanced programming: Python, C

More information:

Group leader 

Dr. Tomás Andrade
tandrade@icc.ub.edu 

Research product / Research group 

Website of Tomas Andrade 

https://icc.ub.edu/people/486

website of the Virgo interferometer

https://www.virgo-gw.eu 

Website of the Einstein Telescope project

https://www.et-gw.eu

ICCUB participation in Virgo

http://icc.ub.edu/research/key_projects/virgo

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) invites applications for PhD positions. 

The successful candidates will work with Profs Jorge Casalderrey-Solana, Raul Jimenez, David Mateos and other members of the ICCUB on applications of holography to cosmology and astrophysics, with a focus on gravitational waves. Appointments are likely to begin in the Summer or Fall of 2023.

The official call is expected to open soon and we are seeking to make a preselection of potential candidates. Thus, interested candidates should apply here as soon as possible. 

In parallel, we also encourage candidates to apply independently to the PhD INPhINIT fellowships funded by “La Caixa”. In this case the selection will be done directly by “La Caixa”, but the successful candidates will work at the ICCUB in the same conditions as above. More information about the INPhINIT fellowships can be found below:

-----

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

Holography (a.k.a. AdS/CFT or gauge/gravity correspondence) relates the quantum-mechanical dynamics of a strongly coupled, four-dimensional gauge theory to that of classical gravity in a five-dimensional anti de Sitter (AdS) spacetime. The power of this correspondence is that it allows the use of classical gravity in 5D to tackle otherwise intractable problems on the gauge theory side.

In many applications of holography the metric where the gauge theory lives is taken to be non-dynamical. For example, this metric is flat in the holographic description of the quark-gluon plasma.

This framework is insufficient if the 4D metric is dynamical. This limits potential applications of holography to phase transitions in the early Universe, neutron star mergers, cosmological singularities, etc.

Following our pioneering work [1], we will extend the holographic framework to describe a strongly interacting 4D gauge theory coupled to 4D dynamical gravity. We will then apply it to the study of the problems mentioned above. A primary outcome will be the spectrum of gravitational waves (GW) produced in these processes, which could be experimentally measured at future GW detectors.

The student will join the group led by Profs Casalderrey and Mateos, which is part of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB). We are world leaders in applications of holography and have co-authored a standard reference in the field [2]. Mateos managed a 1.4M€ European ERC grant in 2012-2017 and is now the PI of one of the six priority lines of the ICCUB’s “Maria de Maeztu” distinction for units of excellence. In the last 10 years we have trained 17 students and postdocs, many of whom now hold postdoctoral or faculty positions.

[1] D. Mateos, J. Casalderrey et al, ``Holographic Evolution with Dynamical Boundary Gravity,'' JHEP 03 (2022), 137.

[2] Casalderrey, D. Mateos et al, “Gauge/String Duality, Hot QCD, and Heavy Ion Collisions”, Cambridge University Press (2014).

Job position description

The successful candidate will be a PhD student at the ICCUB. Our institute is uniquely positioned worldwide for this research because of our expertise in all the fields involved. The work will be highly interdisciplinary, ranging from theoretical analysis based on holography to running numerical relativity codes on high-performance supercomputers. 

The student will interact with Profs Casalderrey and Mateos on an almost-daily basis. In addition, as part of his training, he/she will attend some of the many activities at the ICCUB, including:

• Weekly seminars by visiting external researchers.

• Weekly seminars by the group's researchers.

• Colloquia at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB).

• Weekly Journal Clubs on “Gravity and Strings” and on “Cosmology”.

All these activities, especially the last one, have a high formative value. In addition, the student will attend advanced lessons and courses taught at the ICCUB, as long as these courses are relevant to the subject of the project. In particular, courses are planned on holography and probably on superstrings and supersymmetry, taught both by members of the group and by internationally recognized expert visitors.

More information:

Prof. David Mateos and Jorge Casalderrey-Solana
dmateos@fqa.ub.edu 

Research product / Research group 

Website of the “Quantum Field Theory and String Theory” research area at the ICCUB 

https://icc.ub.edu/research/quantum-field-theory-and-string-theory

Website of the “Gravitation and Cosmology” research area at the ICCUB

https://icc.ub.edu/research/gravitation-and-cosmology

Website of the “Particle Physics Phenomenology” research area at the ICCUB

https://icc.ub.edu/research/particle-physics-phenomenology

Website of the “Gravitational Waves” research area at the ICCUB

https://icc.ub.edu/research/gravitational-waves

David Mateos’ website 

https://www.icrea.cat/Web/ScientificStaff/David-Mateos-465

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship, the Institute is offering ten different projects:

• Ab initio simulations of ultradilute quantum gases and liquids
• Binary black hole mergers from globular clusters
• Disequilibrium Dynamics of Galactic Dark Matter Halos and its Impact on the Milky Way
• From Stellar Nurseries to Rocky Planets
• Holography in the Gravitational Wave Era
• Mining the Gaia catalogue: structure and kinematics of the Milky Way
• Modeling gravitational waves for the future generations
• Quantum machine learning to detect Dark Matter with Atomic Nuclei
• Studying close interactions in binary stars in the Milky Way
• Unveiling the mysteries of the Universe with massive galaxy surveys

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

The ICCUB Physical Cosmology group has been studying connections between theory and observations - via interpretation of data - since 2007. Our main research interest is making the link between cosmological observations and theoretical physics beyond the standard cosmological model, hoping to shed some light on the “open questions” in cosmology, whose members of the group have actively contributed to. These are questions such as, what are the properties of dark ma8er, what is dark energy, which is the mass of the neutrinos or whether there is new physics beyond the standard model of cosmology. Our collective expertise ranges from galaxy evolution to inflation model building, but our main strengths are in analysis and interpretation of large-scale structure surveys. Members of the group are involved in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and in the Euclid consortium. These highly international collaborations aim to survey massive areas of the sky in order to generate the largest 3D galaxy maps. Exploiting the statistical properties of these maps we can infer the underlying physics of the Universe. In particular DESI is expected to produce data on a timescale shorter than the studentship offering a unique opportunity to exploit this data. The student will join the research group led by Prof. Licia Verde, world expert in physical cosmology, and will have the chance to become member of international collaborations such as DESI and Euclid. The student will also have the opportunity to collaborate with other universities which the group has tight links, including the University of Padova, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris and Imperial College in London. The group offers a diverse and vibrant learning and research environment.

Job position description

The current understanding of the Universe is highly incomplete. According to the standard cosmological model, its dynamics is governed by two mysterious components which represent 95% of the energy content of the Universe: dark matter and dark en- Physics ergy. For each of these components, we have multiple and independent indirect evidences and fragmentary theoretical comprehension. Unveiling the nature of these dark sector components represents the next frontier in fundamental physics. The next-generation galaxy surveys, such as DESI and Euclid, will play a crucial role.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will measure the effect of dark energy on the expansion of the universe. It will collect optical spectra for tens of millions of galaxies and quasars, which will allow the creation of the largest 3D map spanning the nearby universe up to 11 billion light years. DESI has already started collecting spectra in 2020 and is expected to continue to do so for another 4 years at least. Several intermediate data releases and publication of cosmological results are expected. The student will have access to these non-public datasets to develop their research in some of the following topics: better understanding the properties of General Relativity at cosmic scales, unveiling the properties of dark energy, measuring the growth of cosmic structure, detecting a neutrino mass signature, or detecting a primordial cosmological perturbations signature. The research on any of these areas is expected to have a massive impact along this decade and will contribute to answering the big open puzzles introduced above.

The student will work alongside the rest of the team to develop the appropriate techniques to be applied to DESI data to perform any of the research topics mentioned above. The student will be fully involved with the cosmological interpretation and publication of the results.

More information:

Group leader 

Prof. Licia Verde
liciaverde@icc.ub.edu 

Research product / Research group 

Description of the members of the group 

https://sites.google.com/icc.ub.edu/liciaverde/group

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

https://www.desi.lbl.gov/

Euclid mission webpage

https://sci.esa.int/web/eucliddes

Other members of the group webpage

https://www.ub.edu/bispectrum

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT ”la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona is a research centre accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence María de Maeztu in 2020, the perfect place to carry out your PhD project through an INPhINIT Incoming fellowship.

Research Project:

The stars in our Milky Way (MW) only constitute about 6% of the total mass in the Galaxy. The rest of this mass is invisible to us, the so-called dark matter (DM) and distributed in a halo that surrounds the Galaxy. In the current LCDM model, galaxies grow hierarchically through mergers of smaller units into large ones. The recent Gaia satellite has revealed that our Galaxy underwent a massive merger event 10 Gyr ago with the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE) galaxy and that the disc is currently reacting to recent perturbations whose origins are still highly debated. When satellite galaxies merge into bigger ones, they generate gravitational density wakes as they orbit within the DM haloes of their hosts, causing their orbits to decay over time.

Wakes have been noted to be important to understand the interaction of both the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Sgr with the MW (and likely the GSE). However, little is known about the dynamics of wakes: How long do these last (in the stellar halo, in the MW disc)?  How do they affect large/small scale dynamics of Galactic discs? What is their role in setting the structure of the Galaxy versus that of the self-gravity in discs? This non-linear problem can only be tracked with numerical tools.

This project will be carried out with the Near Field Cosmology group led by Dr. Laporte (currently 2 postdocs and a PI) with funding from an ERC grant who develop numerical simulations to understand the accretion history of the MW and its impact on its formation, and with the Gaia group of the ICCUB. The GaiaUB team (4 staff, 8 postdocs, 4 PhD, and 8 engineers) has a leading role in Gaia at the highest technological, scientific and management levels, as well as in the scientific and technical building of WEAVE, and performs research in Galactic fields including dynamics, open clusters and the LMCs. We have weekly science group meetings and a weekly journal club.

Job position description

How long do DM wakes persist in the Galaxy? How do they affect the dynamics of Galactic discs or stellar halos? What is their role in setting the structure of the Galaxy versus that of the self-gravity in discs?

This PhD will focus on presenting an in-depth study of DM halo wakes harnessing the power of basis function expansions (BFE) to study them in idealised and full cosmological context. In this PhD, the student will use state-of-the-art codes (EXP, Arepo), develop code (integrating a BFE module to Arepo) and design numerical experiments tailored to answer the above questions with applications from stellar halo dynamics to that of the disc to interpret the latest observations (e.g. Gaia, WEAVE, SDSS-V). This will involve use of HPC facilities at the national and European level. The student will interact with Drs. Laporte and Antoja informally practically on a daily basis (weekly formal) and will be expected to participate in the group meetings.

The student will also analyse catalogues from the Gaia mission (ESA) from the releases DR3 and DR4 (2025-2026) and data from large spectroscopic surveys from the ground (WEAVE@WHT, SDSS-V) that will soon provide kinematic and chemical data for a large amount of stars but also use/test results from their numerical experiments to interpret some of these data.

The PhD candidate will create strong collaborations by being integrated in the international network of the joint teams (e.g., Beyond BFE Collaboration, VIRGO Consortium, SDSS-V, DPAC consortium with 450 scientists and engineers, WEAVE science team, MW-Gaia COST and REG networks). The candidate will also benefit from the interaction with the software engineering group at the ICCUB Technological Unit.

More information:

Group leader 

Dr. Chervin Laporte and Teresa Antoja
chervin.laporte@icc.ub.edu 

Research product / Research group 

Website of the “VIA LACTEA” ERC Project led at the ICCUB 

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/852839

Gaia group site

https://gaia.ub.edu/

Relevant paper

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0510-7

Relevant paper

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019MNRAS.485.3134L/abstract

Employment conditions 

The maximum total payment amount will be €122,592, as broken down below: 

- An annual payment of €35,800 to the institution to cover the Fellow’s contract, who will receive a gross annual income around €28.000. This amount might vary if there are modifications in the legal framework.

- €3,500 per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. 

The ”la Caixa” Foundation will award a prize of €7,500 (subject to taxes), which will be paid to the  fellows who deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.

• The tuition fees to the official doctoral programme 

In addition to financial support, the fellowship includes a training programme on transversal skills, which has been specially designed by leading international institutions in the sector. 

For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to this document.

Working at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences is a research institute of the University of Barcelona. It is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. In addition, the institute has a strong technology program through its participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics.

Moreover, the ICCUB participates in many key international scientific consortia and projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Gaia astrometric space mission, the MAGIC / CTA high-energy astrophysics telescopes, and the Virgo gravitational wave detector, among others. Additional information about the Institute and the University of Barcelona can be found here.

You will be encouraged to contribute and interact with other researchers in the vibrant and international research environment as well as to participate in our outreach initiatives, more information at serviAstro and serviParticules.

As part of the University of Barcelona, the ICCUB is a recipient of the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research (HRS4R) Award, which recognises, among other achievements, respect for equal opportunities and the capacity to attract talent in a positive working environment that promotes the pursuit of successful research careers. The ICCUB respects the principles of open, transparent, merit-based selection. We strongly encourage women and underrepresented minorities in physical sciences to apply. For additional information please see the Diversity, equity and inclusion Commission.

The ICCUB is located in Barcelona, considered the 8th World's Best Cities 2021: one with near-perfect weather year-round, miles and miles of beaches, iconic parks, striking architecture and colourful neighbourhoods that march to their own beat—artistic, sophisticated, bohemian. Moreover, it is a pole of attraction for the technology sector, a top choice to establish a company in this sector, and it hosts some of the world's major technological events, such as the Mobile World Congress and the Smart City Expo. In addition, Barcelona and its metropolitan area is a leading destination on the map of global technological ecosystems and has infrastructures such as science parks, universities and the 22@ district.

Requirements

In order to be accepted, candidates must meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Experience: At the call deadline, applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree or be in a position to apply for one. 
• Studies pursued: Applicants must hold a higher education degree that makes them eligible to enroll in a doctoral programme before starting at their host institutions.

The host university will verify, upon starting the admission process to the doctoral programme, that the studies taken up by the selected candidates make them eligible to enroll in an official doctoral programme in accordance with the regulations in force in Spain or Portugal. Should they be found not eligible after verification, the fellowship will be withdrawn. 

Under no circumstances may candidates have previously enrolled in the same doctoral studies for which they are applying for the fellowship.

• Geographic mobility: Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline. Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.
• Level of English: Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

For more information on the candidates requirements, please refer to this document.

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted online through the following link in English. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to this document.

Inquiries about the application submission can be directed to fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org. 

Deadline: Please submit your applications by January 25th 2023 at 2pm. 

Selection process:

The process is comprised of three phases:

• Eligibility screening: all applications received are reviewed to check the accomplishment of the eligibility criteria published in the rules for participation
• Remote evaluation (shortlisting): an evaluation panel will review the applications and those that receive the highest scores will pass to the next stage.
• Personal interviews: shortlisted candidates are invited to a remotely interview before a multidisciplinary committee on May 23, 35 and 25 2023.

The rating criteria that govern the selection process can be found in the Evaluation of applications section of the ”la Caixa” Fellowship Programme website.

For more information on the selection process, please refer to this document.

Contact: fellowships@fundacionlacaixa.org

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No713673.

The co-funded part of the programme runs from 01/10/2016 to 30/09/2021 and finances the researchers recruited under Call 2017 and 2018.

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) is seeking an Engineer to join the Software and Data Engineering department of the Technological Unit of the ICCUB. 

The ICCUB (https://icc.ub.edu) is an interdisciplinary center devoted to fundamental research in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics. The ICCUB Technology Unit focuses on inventing and building the ambitious and innovative detection instruments of the future. This involves collaborating on large projects related to particle physics experiments, space missions, astronomical facilities and more.

The ICCUB is a center with more than 60 long term scientists, 20 engineers and 80 postdoctoral researchers (55% international) and PhD students (30% international) offering an international and multicultural environment. The ICCUB also hosts a vibrant fundamental research program in cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics, with a strong technology unit supporting our participation in international collaborations in observational astronomy and experimental particle physics. 

Job Description:

Currently, the unit is composed by a team of around 20 engineers and researchers divided in two departments: Electronics & Instrumentation, and Software & Data Engineering. The Software and Data Engineering division designs software to help producing high quality datasets, which give significance to the experiments and to the Physics behind, like Gaia (https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia) or LHCb

(http://lhcb.web.cern.ch/).

Since 2018, the ICCUB participates at scientific and technological levels in the PLATO mission (https://sci.esa.int/web/plato). PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) is the third medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme. Its objective is to find and study a large number of extrasolar planetary systems, with emphasis on the properties of terrestrial planets in the habitable zone around solar-like stars. PLATO has also been designed to investigate seismic activity in stars, enabling the precise characterisation of the planet host star, including its age.

We search for a highly motivated Engineer with experience in collaborative software design and development for high-efficiency data handling and communication systems.

To know more about the research interests of the ICCUB, please follow this link.

Taks:

The main tasks are to design and implement the repository, interfaces and communication tools for the optimal ground-based follow-up of exoplanet candidates of the PLATO mission. It will involve regular meetings and teleconferences with experts from other European centres working on PLATO.

Requirements:

• Knowledge of:
  • Programming, including C/C++, Python and Java
  • Databases (e.g. MySQL or Postgres) and SQL language
  • Web technologies (e.g. REST API, JavaScript and derivatives)
  • Linux and Shell scripting environments
  • Collaborative development (e.g. Git)
  • Basic knowledge on astronomical concepts, especially in the operation of terrestrial observatories, is encouraged.
• Experience in international projects, especially in space missions
• Degree in computer engineering, in engineering on communication technologies and services, in mathematics, or in physics.
• MECR intermediate English level B1 certificate.

Employment conditions:

We offer a full-time contract for a period of six months with anticipated renewal for up to two additional years; this is contingent upon the availability of funds and job performance.

Gross monthly salary will be around 2.200€ (14 payments/year) with included social security and public healthcare benefits, covering spouse and children.

Position is expected to begin in two months, although exceptions can be made in cases of maternity/paternity or other special circumstances. 

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement:

ICCUB offers and promotes a diverse and inclusive environment and welcomes applicants regardless of age, disability, gender, nationality, race, religion or sexual orientation (for additional information please see the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission. Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call or email secretaria@icc.ub.edu with their request.

Application procedure:

Documents that will be required for your application are:

• Curriculum Vitae
• Motivation letter

All applications must be submitted through this link. It will be appreciated if you send a copy to secretaria@icc.ub.edu

Deadline:

Applications must be submitted before November 22nd.

Funding:

This study was supported by MCIN with funding from European Union NextGenerationEU(PRTR-C17.I1) and by Generalitat de Catalunya