Postdoctoral Position on Milky Way evolution and abundance analysis in the WEAVE era

Understanding the Milky Way implies having precise and accurate chemical abundances, ages and stellar orbits. These allow to identify unique stellar formation sites and scale appropriately the star formation histories of the different regions of the disc and  the accreted components. The synergy between the Gaia space satellite and the ground-based spectroscopic survey WEAVE will give access, for the first time, to more than 30 tracers of the past of our Galaxy for a million stars of the extended Solar neighbourhood, and to a dozen of tracers for another two million stars outside of it.

We are seeking candidates with an expertise in Galactic evolution, the Milky-Way, and/or abundance determination (expertise in machine learning techniques would be an asset), to work on the creation of a homogeneous chemical catalogue of WEAVE, based on the information coming from the different Contributed Data Products of the project, and on the interpretation of this catalogue in the context of galactic archaeology (e.g. characterise the properties of the in-situ galactic disc and the accreted populations). This work will be performed in close collaboration with Georges Kordopatis and Vanessa Hill as well as colleagues from Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur, Observatoire de Paris (GEPI) and Observatoire de Strasbourg.

Employment conditions

Position is for 3yr, supported by the Agence Nationale de Recherche (MWDisc project). Net annual salary will be in the range 27-38k€, depending on experience. Position is expected to begin at the earliest in January 2022 and no later than June 2022.