Postdoctoral Research Assistant

The position is for two years fixed term contract, commencing between April and October 2019

We are looking for a highly motivated researcher to join the HI intensity mapping research team led by Dr. Alkistis Pourtsidou in the Astronomy Unit (AU), School of Physics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London, as part of the programme “Neutral Hydrogen intensity mapping with MeerKAT”, funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/S000437/1).

The researcher will lead and contribute to cutting edge research exploiting the first HI intensity mapping data from the MeerKAT radio telescope. MeerKAT is a prominent SKA precursor and a world-class facility in its own right. The researcher will work on calibration and foreground removal techniques using available test data, as well as simulations and pipeline development to detect HI in auto and cross-correlation using Science Verification data. This research project aims to perform transformational measurements in the radio and prepare large sky HI intensity mapping surveys with MeerKAT and SKA1-MID.

The Cosmology and Relativity Group at QMUL has diverse research interests spanning large-scale structure and radio cosmology, inflation and the early universe, black holes and General Relativity, advanced perturbation theory, and gravitational lensing. Group members play key roles in many international experiments, including the Square Kilometre Array, Euclid, and LSST. The successful candidate will also interact closely with researchers in the Centre for Radio Cosmology at the University of the Western Cape. The successful candidate will be encouraged to additionally pursue their own research projects.

The Astronomy Unit has access to excellent local computational facilities, including an HPC cluster with 5000 cores, and a Tier2 GridPP cluster with more than 5PB of storage and 2000 cores.

The position is available for 2 years commencing between April and October 2019. There is a possibility of a 2-year extension contingent on funding. Potential applicants are welcome to contact Dr. Alkistis Pourtsidou should they require further information on the research aspects of the position ([email protected]).

General information about the School can be found at www.ph.qmul.ac.uk and about the Astronomy Unit at http://astro.qmul.ac.uk/.