FP7 ITARS ITN: Early Stage Researcher (ESR4): Microphysical retrieval of aerosol parameters using multi-wavelength lidar and depolarization signals
Applications are invited for a PhD position to work in the ITARS project, a Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) within the FP7 programme. ITARS (Initial Training for Atmospheric Remote Sensing) focuses on the synergistic application of high-end ground-based remote-sensing instrumentation that has the potential to substantially contribute to an improved understanding of aerosols, clouds, and aerosol-cloud interaction processes and their role for both climate and weather. ITARS science objectives are
- to bring together experts from the aerosol and cloud community to efficiently tackle the problems of aerosol-cloud interaction as well as their relevance for climate and weather,
- to build close ties between industry and research to optimize instrumentation for future networks, and
- to assess the potential of advanced remote-sensing instrumentation and capabilities as an ingredient in a future observation system based on both ground-based networks and space-borne observations.
The selected candidate will study mathematical inverse ill-posed problems and regularization techniques in a first step. In a second step she/he will exploit these mathematical algorithms to infer microphysical and optical properties of non-spherical aerosol particles by combining multi-wavelength backscatter/extinction coefficient and depolarization profiles as well as to develop a quality control procedure of the optical and the subsequent microphysical parameters using elastic/Raman lidar and sun-photometer data. The algorithms obtained will also be used in the evaluation of microphysical particle properties from real-life data of different ITARS network stations. Additionally, the Early Stage Researcher will be seconded to the Optical Remote Sensing Laboratory, run by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain), to work on the error analysis procedure, and to CIMEL Electronique Company (Paris, France) to learn about integrated column sensors and combined lidar and sun-photometer inversion.
The post is available for 3 years at the University of Potsdam, Institute of Mathematics, Germany, and the salary will be commensurate with a Marie-Curie Early-Stage Researcher (ESR) position.
Nr. Job Positions: 1
Research Fields
Mathematics, Applied and Computational Mathematics, Algorithms; Physics, Computational and Mathematical Physics
Career Stage
Early stage researcher or 0-4 yrs (Post graduate)
Research Profile
First Stage Researcher (R1)
Comment/web site for additional job details
For more information on ITARS and on the applications process see www.itars.net ; see http://users.math.uni-potsdam.de/~bockmann/ for the mathematical grounding and the algorithm development.
Requirements
| Required Education Level | |
|---|---|
| Degree | Master Degree or equivalent |
| Degree Field | Mathematics, Numerical or Applied Mathematics; Physics |
| Required Languages | |
| Language | ENGLISH |
| Language Level | Good |
Additional Requirements
Excellent computer programming skills (MATLAB/Octave, C++, FORTRAN, QT, Origin, TEX).
Willingness to work as a mathematician in an application field, i.e., in Atmospheric Physics and in an interdisciplinary team.
Applicants must be researchers who have not yet been awarded the doctorate degree and are in the first 4 years (full-time equivalent) of their research careers. This includes the period of research training, starting at the date of obtaining the degree which would formally entitle them to embark on a doctorate either in the country in which the degree was obtained, irrespective whether or not a doctorate is envisaged.
Applicants may not have resided or carried out their main activity in Germany for more than 12 months in the last 3 years. Short stays such as holidays are not taken into account.