Postdoctoral Research Associate in Star Formation

The Department of Astrophysics at CEA-Saclay invites applications for a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the field of star formation. The postdoctoral position is funded for a duration of 2 years with no extension possible. The starting date is as early as possible and in September 2018 at the latest.

The postdoctoral research associate will joint the Laboratory of Astrophysical Plasma (LMPA) of CEA-Saclay and will be part of the Hyperstars project, a collaboration between astrophysicists specialized in star formation and interstellar dynamics (observation and numerical simulation) and experts of data science from Laboratoire des Signaux et Systèmes of Centrale-Supélec, Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris 6 and Laboratoire d’Informatique Avancée de Saint-Denis. 

The project aims at exploring the problem of structure formation in the interstellar medium using hyper-spectral data (21 cm, CO, radio recombination lines) and/or numerical simulations. The scientific goal is to better understand the complex physics of the formation of dense gas in galaxies, especially the formation of cold atomic gas, a key step in the star formation process. To this end the Hyperstars project is exploring better ways to analyse large hyper-spectral data sets and to compare them with numerical simulations using innovative machine learning methods.

The successful application will have a PhD in astrophysics, with expertise in the fields of star formation, interstellar medium or turbulence. Experience in the analysis of hyper-spectral data (HI, molecular or radio recombination lines), numerical simulations of the interstellar medium or machine learning techniques is a plus.

Application must contain a description of past and future research (3 pages), a CV including a list of publication, and the name and contact of two potential references.