DIRECTOR of ASIAA

Academia Sinica’s Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) is searching for an outstanding scientist with international experience and research credentials to become its next Director, starting on 1 September 2020 for renewable three-year terms.  The Director is responsible for the overall scientific leadership and administrative management of the Institute including its laboratories, facilities, and a staff of about two hundred people.

The Director of ASIAA reports to the President of Academia Sinica.  Academia Sinica is the premier institution of basic research in Taiwan, with twenty four research institutes and seven research centers with about one thousand faculty researchers working in the physical sciences and mathematics, life sciences, as well as humanities and social sciences. ASIAA has a wide range of scientific fields of interest, including cosmology, formation and evolution of galaxies and clusters, star and planet formation, evolved stars and compact objects, physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium, solar and exoplanetary systems and instrumentation developments.

ASIAA is located on the campus of National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei, sharing a modern building, in part, with the Institute of Astrophysics of NTU, and has close collaborations with NTU and other universities in Taiwan.  The scientific staff is very international, from 22 different countries, and the working language at the institute is English.  Presently, there are 40 faculty members, 64 postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars, 36 technical staff, 20 administrative staff, 3 research assistants, and 43 graduate and undergraduate students.

ASIAA enjoys access to a wide range of international observing facilities.  These  include ALMA, through Taiwan’s participation with both the East Asian and North American ALMA partners, and other forefront radio observing facilities such as the Sub-Millimeter Array (SMA) atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii (a collaboration with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO)), the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) through the East Asian Observatory (EAO), the Greenland Telescope (GLT, also a collaboration with SAO), and the Y. T. Lee Array (formerly known as AMIBA) on Mauna Loa, Hawaii.  The VLBI group joins the Event Horizon Telescope in mm and submm observations of supermassive black holes. In the optical and infrared wavelengths, ASIAA has access to the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea through participation in instrumentation projects. ASIAA also has access to the Hyper-Suprime-Cam (HSC) and the Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) surveys of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe) project. In addition, ASIAA has installed three 1.3 m telescopes at San Pedro Martir in Mexico for the TAOS-2 project (partners include National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and SAO) to survey small objects beyond Neptune and conduct time domain sciences. Theory and computational astrophysics are carried out aimed at developing numerical simulators to bridge observations and theories in the research areas of the institute.

The salary level of the position is competitive at the international level.  In addition, Academy subsidized housing is provided.  Fluency in Chinese or English, preferably both, is required. Applications or nominations should include a cover letter, a statement of interests and vision for the institute, curriculum vitae, and three names of references.  The deadline for receipt of applications is 14 September, 2019 and the decision will be made in early 2020.  Please send all material to Dr. Ronald E. Taam (e-mail: [email protected]; Fax: 886-2-2367-7849).