Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Exoplanets and Protoplanetary Disks

Seeking a physicist or astronomer to join the Astrophysics group and undertake research at The University of Queensland (UQ) as part of the Australian Research Council Discovery Project: Planet Formation at Solar System Scales with the James Webb Space Telescope. The position is available for a period of three years.

This position is focused on direct imaging of exoplanets and protoplanetary disks. The main aim of the Discovery Project is to use data from the James Webb Space Telescope, and in particular the UQ team’s Guaranteed Time Observations with the NIRISS-AMI instrument, to image protoplanetary and debris disks at high resolution. The project also more broadly encompasses possibilities in disk simulations, optical design and data analysis, and ongoing observations with JWST and other instruments. The candidate will ideally have experience in interferometric or coronagraphic direct imaging science, Bayesian statistics and/or machine learning, and/or simulations of protoplanetary disks.

The candidate will have access to resources for travel and equipment under the ARC Discovery Project as well as existing expertise in cosmology and astrophysics at The University of Queensland. As part of the ARC Discovery Project, they would have active collaborations with members of the AMI GTO team based at the University of Sydney, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and the Universities of Victoria and Montréal in Canada. Our group also has active collaborations with the exoplanet group nearby at the University of Southern Queensland, as well as access to the ESO optical telescopes and Australian observing and computing facilities.