Brinson Postdoctoral Fellowship

We invite applications for the Brinson Postdoctoral Fellowship in Astronomical Instrumentation at the Carnegie Institution for Science, to begin in September 2022. The Fellow will be based at the Observatories, in Pasadena, California, but visits to Carnegie’s Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, DC as often as needed will be supported if scientifically relevant. The successful applicant will work with senior scientists and staff engineers to design and fabricate the next generation of astronomical instruments and telescopes. The principal selection criteria will be instrumentation experience, creativity, and promise of future achievement. We are particularly interested in applicants who have received their Ph.D. degree within the past three years. Fellowships are awarded for three years and may be renewed for up to two additional years.

The Carnegie Institution owns and operates the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, which includes the twin 6.5-meter Magellan telescopes as well as the 2.5-meter du Pont and 1.0-meter Swope telescopes. Carnegie is also a full institutional member of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV and V and a founding member of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), which will be located at Las Campanas Observatory. Based in Pasadena, between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, the Observatories provides an exceptional research environment. The Pasadena campus hosts an instrument development laboratory used to produce research tools including optical and infrared imagers and spectrographs, detector systems, and telescopes at all scales. Current projects include instrumentation for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V, MIRMOS (PI Nick Konidaris), MagNIFIES (PI Alycia Weinberger), and the Commissioning Camera for the GMT (PI Jeff Crane). Candidates are encouraged to reach out to the PI of these projects to learn more about them. The Brinson Fellowship provides an opportunity for a junior instrumentalist to gain significant experience by playing a major role in an existing or future instrumentation project at Carnegie.

Scientific computing resources available include the Carnegie Memex cluster (https://sites.google.com/carnegiescience.edu/memex) in addition to local computing resources, and a state-of-the-art Visualization Lab. Fellows will have access to dedicated computational facilities and Carnegie observing facilities on the same basis as the scientific staff. The fellowship provides generous support for travel, computing, and publications.

The Carnegie Institution strives to enable a scientifically excellent, equitable, and inclusive community, and therefore aims for diverse groups of people to collaborate and thrive at Carnegie. Applicants may use their cover letter to describe how they have contributed to such community characteristics in previous positions, and how those contributions have been informed by their life experiences. Candidates from under-represented groups and backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

The application should include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, bibliography, a brief essay describing the applicant's current research (up to 3 pages including references), and a research proposal (up to 5 pages including references) based on the facilities available at the Observatories. These materials along with the names of three references must be submitted via the web to https://obs.carnegiescience.edu/fellowships/ by November 1, 2021. Reference letters are due by November 8, 2021. Applicants for the Brinson Fellowship can also choose to be considered for the Carnegie, Carnegie-Princeton and/or Carnegie Origins Fellowships with a single application. Applicants interested in multiple fellowships should describe in their research proposal how their plans would differ for each fellowship. The successful applicant must have completed the Ph.D. requirements before assuming the fellowship. E-mail inquiries may be sent to Dr. Josh Simon at [email protected].

The Carnegie Institution for Science is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, protected veteran status, disability, or other protected group status.