One Postdoctoral Software Contract ERC Advanced Grant Polmag

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC, Tenerife, Spain) invites applications for one postdoctoral contract funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant project “Polarized Radiation Diagnostics for Exploring the Magnetism of the Outer Solar Atmosphere” (POLMAG), led by Prof. Javier Trujillo Bueno.  

The IAC is a Public Consortium and a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence doing research on the following areas of astrophysics: solar physics, planetary systems, stellar and interstellar physics, galactic formation and evolution, cosmology and astroparticles, as well as on development of instrumentation. Further information about the IAC's research programme is available at http://www.iac.es/. The appointed candidate will benefit from the research environment at the IAC, which hosts one of the largest and most active Solar Physics groups in Europe. The group covers theory, numerical modeling, observations and instrumental development, and is seriously involved on the development of novel international projects such as the EST (European Solar Telescope) and CLASP (Chromospheric LAyer SpectroPolarimeter).

Duties: The selected candidate will have the following responsibilities:

• Optimization of the POLMAG spectral synthesis and inversion codes.

• To create a modern code development infrastructure to be used by all members of POLMAG, including a version control system, a bugs/features ticketing system, and code documentation.

• To develop and maintain the “Polarized Radiation Diagnostics Website”, with the advice of the PI and the other POLMAG scientists.

• Acting as scientific advisor in internal review processes of the group’s supercomputing projects and funding proposals.

• Elaboration of technical reports on the computer codes of the POLMAG project and preparation of competitive proposals to achieve computing time in HPC infrastructures.

• Advise in the field of supercomputing to the PhD students of the POLMAG project, including the possibility of co-directing doctoral and/or master theses.

• Technical-economic management of the POLMAG supercomputing work packages, as well as elaboration of reports of progress, justification, etc., to the financing entity, in coordination with the PI and the personnel involved in project management.

• Advise on the scientific dissemination activity of the POLMAG project and on the preparation of public outreach material on the project’s research area. To act as "community manager" of the corresponding website and other platforms in social networks.

The following experience will be highly valued:

• Advanced use of HPC systems for complex scientific applications: HPC scheduling systems, parallel file systems, parallel visualization, etc.

• Parallel performance measurement tools for profiling and optimizing massively parallel codes.

• Substantial parallel programing experience, especially MPI, OpenMP and GPU programming.

• Previous experience working in Solar Physics research teams.

Position requirements: The candidate must have demonstrated experience in the type of activities mentioned above.

Qualification requirements: To be eligible for admission, applicants must have completed a Ph.D. degree in Informatics, within the application deadline (31st August, 2017). A copy of your degree or corresponding stamped certificate (issued on behalf of the University where you have obtained the degree), must be included. If the applicant has not completed the Ph.D. degree within the application deadline, will not be considered.

Training: Those candidates who have done their PhD research at the IAC must have undertaken a period of training at other research centres. This period must consist of either one continuous year or 18 accumulated months (including periods of training during their doctoral period).

Remuneration: The gross annual salary will be 39,622.26 Euros, plus the annual residence allowance (2,099.91 Euros). The contract includes medical insurance under the Spanish National Health Service, which will also cover the registered partner (de facto partner) and children (if relevant).

Research travel funds: The contract includes all the travel expenses needed for the successful development of the project (meetings, workshops, observations, collaborations, etc.).

Relocation allowance: This call includes a relocation allowance only for the selected candidate comprising: the cost of your flight ticket (booked and issued by the IAC), your stay for up to two weeks (organised by the IAC) and per diem rate up to two weeks. The maximum IAC will reimburse is 2,000 Euros.

Non-UE citizens: If you are citizen of a country not belonging to the European Union, you can apply for this position, but if selected, you will not be allowed to sign the contract with the IAC until you obtain the compulsory documentation required to live and work in Spain (NIE card). 

How to apply: use the online application system, http://www.iac.es/jobs/research/swpolmag2017, including the required information and documents. Alternatively, follow the instructions in the official announcement (only in Spanish).

The required documentation must be submitted using the online application system and received by the application deadline: 31st August, 2017, 23:59h (Canarian Local Time, same as London). The CV, publication list, summary of research experience and suitability for the job, copy of your Ph.D. degree and copy of your National Identity Card or passport, must be converted into a single PDF file.

In addition, the names and e-mails of three scientists familiar with the work of the candidate must be indicated.

Late applications or those which do not include the mandatory application form (Annex I), will not be considered for admission.  Incomplete applications will have a period of five (5) days, starting from the day after publication of the provisional list of accepted and excluded candidates, to provide missing documentation.

Contact: For scientific enquiries please contact Javier Trujillo Bueno ([email protected]).