Professor and Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology

We seek to appoint a Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) of Durham University to replace the founding Director, Professor Carlos Frenk, who is stepping down from the post in 2019. The ICC is a University Research Institute with over 60 members including academic and support staff, postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate research students.

The new Director will carry out original scientific research at the highest level and will provide intellectual leadership of all aspects of the Institutes activities, including formulating the overall strategy of the Institute, and leading the preparation, submission and subsequent administration of large, Institute-wide research grants. They will oversee the recruitment of research and administrative staff in the Institute and engage in the mentoring of early career researchers; attract and provide excellent supervision to research students; and contribute significantly to PhD training. In addition, they will deliver excellent teaching through lectures, seminars and tutorials at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, demonstrating leadership and innovation in the design and delivery of high quality learning environments.  The new Director will have a full role in developing the strategy of the Physics Department and University and represent the Institute in Department and University bodies.

The ICC was founded in 2002 when the Ogden Centre, consisting of the ICC and the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP), was created and sited in the first Ogden Centre building. The two institutes were the first to be recognized as University Research Institutes in 2008. In November 2016, the ICC moved to a new building, the Ogden Centre West, which it shares with the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy (CEA) and the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation (CfAI).

Today, the ICC is recognized as one of the premier centres in the world for research in cosmology. The ICC has a highly international outlook; it is the base of the Virgo consortium for cosmological simulations, one of the leading collaborations in the subject worldwide.

The ICC operates the Cosmology Machine (COSMA; https://www.cosma.dur.ac.uk/cosma), a group of large supercomputers some of which are part of the STFC’s DiRAC (“Distributed infrastructure for research using advanced computing;” https://dirac.ac.uk/) national high performance computing facility. The ICC has also led the participation of Durham astronomers (ICC, CEA and CfAI) in major multinational, mostly externally funded programmes, currently DESI and 4MOST. Support for research comes from a variety of sources, such as STFC, the EU and the Royal Society.

The ICC is a constituent part of the Physics department and, as such, is integrated within the department's management structure. The Institute is managed by the Director and Deputy Director, aided by the ICC International Advisory Board (IAB) and an internal advisory Steering Committee. The Deputy Director and the members of the Steering Committee are appointed by the Director.