Herzberg Instrument Science Fellow

The Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre of the National Research Council (NRC) is pleased to announce the 2022 competition for the Herzberg Instrument Science Fellowship, tenable at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in Penticton, or at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO) in Victoria, BC, Canada, depending on the instrumentation interests of the applicant. The successful candidate will be an outstanding recent doctoral graduate in astronomy/astrophysics or another closely related discipline who is highly motivated to engage in astronomical instrumentation and technology. They will want to become the Principal Investigators for the next generation of astronomical instruments and facilities, and they will become scientific leaders for astronomy instrumentation projects within the NRC. Herzberg Instrument Science Fellows will undertake leading-edge research activities in astronomical instrumentation, or observational astronomy of relevance to their instrumentation interests.

This hiring is at the research associate (postdoctoral) level. At NRC Canada, these are effectively term limited staff scientists with all the associated benefits, including paid maternity and parental leave, vacation, accruable pension contributions and others. The Herzberg Instrument Science Fellowship is intended to leverage the environment of NRC-HAA, that brings together multi-disciplinary teams includes optical, radio, electrical, mechanical and systems engineers and technicians, project managers, signal processing experts and astronomers.

NRC-HAA is a leading developer of instrumentation for Canada’s current and future ground- and space-based telescopes at radio through to optical wavelengths (e.g., the Square Kilometer Array, SKA, the Attacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, ALMA, the Thirty Meter Telescope, TMT, the James Webb Space Telescope, JWST, Gemini). Additionally, NRC-HAA maintains a strategic R&D program specialising in signal processing, radio dishes, radio receivers, optical and near infrared instrumentation, and adaptive optics. This includes the development of modest-scale pathfinder instruments and on-sky demonstrators. This is in addition to astronomical research activities, that spans exoplanets, star and planet formation, near field cosmology and resolved stellar populations, galaxy evolution, supermassive black holes, high redshift galaxies, time domain astronomy, survey astronomy, and other fields. Activities are split between the DRAO in Penticton, which houses most of the radio expertise, and the DAO in Victoria, which houses the millimeter-wave receiver group as well as most of the optical and near-infrared expertise.

The successful candidate will:

• Engage with the instrumentation teams and provide scientific support, advocacy and insight through close interactions with the technical teams and the science user community, under the mentorship of existing instrument scientists.
• Participate in professional development activities focused on supporting their development into the next generation of Principal Investigators for astronomical instruments.
• Conduct original research in astronomical instrumentation and/or observational astronomy, independently and in collaboration with NRC-HAA staff members.
• Contribute to the scientific exploitation of other NRC-HAA resources, particularly, but not limited to, the expertise of scientific and technical staff, and the astronomical facilities and infrastructure administered by NRC-HAA, including the observatories as well as the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC).
• Engage with the astronomical community to advance Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics mandate to provide astronomical facilities and services to Canadian researchers.

Applicants must have acquired their Ph.D. within the last five years or expect to receive the degree within the next 6 months. Exception will be considered to recognise maternity/parental/personal leave.

Government of Canada