PhD Scholarship in sensing and switching hidden nanomagnets (NETHERLANDS)

Description of the PhD project

In nanophysics great advances have been made in using scanning probe microscopy to image and tune surface phenomena with ultimate resolution. Very recently, it is suggested that these tools are able to ‘look below the surface’ by exploiting anisotropically propagating electrons. Inspired by these intriguing first observations, a novel imaging and manipulation method will be developed by the OIO candidate that is able to uniquely address nanometer-scale ferromagnetic entities embedded well below a metallic surface. Using spin-dependent electron waves strongly focused due to the anisotropy of the Fermi surface, it will be possible to explore spin imaging and manipulation in the true nanometer regime! 

This vacancy will be promoted at the PhD Workshop Beijing.

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader in Electrical Power & Energy Engineering ( University of Bath - UK)

A Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader post is available immediately in the Centre for Sustainable Power Distribution in the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering at The University of Bath. The department is rated in the UK top 10 in its Unit of Assessment in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 and number 4 in the UK National Student Survey 2009.

The research focus of the post can be in any area of electrical power and energy engineering. The successful candidate will play a key role in developing interdisciplinary power and energy research within the Faculty of Engineering and Design and the wider university. The appointee will contribute to the department’s growing collaborations with Chinese universities in research and teaching.

Opportunities for research funding are excellent and the area has been identified as a priority by government, industry, the UK research councils and the EU. Teaching will include both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

Applicants for Senior Lecturer/Reader, should have a strong track record of publications at an international level and a proven ability to attract research funding.

Lecturer in Power Electronics (University of Aberdeen - UK)

Job Summary: The School of Engineering at the University of Aberdeen is seeking to appoint a Lecturer who will contribute to research and teaching in the Power Electronics area. The appointee will be a dynamic individual with clear ability for leading highest-quality research in his/her field. He/she will have excellent communication skills and the desire and ability to excel in teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

The successful applicant will strengthen an established power systems group with internationally recognised excellence in power electronics applications to transmission/distribution systems. There is an opportunity to contribute to the existing research on DC Transmission grids and to develop new research areas.

The new Lecturer will join a research-intensive General Engineering unit, which had 83% of its research output ranked as world leading or internationally excellent in the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008).

Salary will be at the appropriate point on the Grade 7 scale (£36,862 - £44,016 per annum), with placement according to qualifications and experience.

Full Professor Position in Innovative Structural Design (NETHERLANDS)

Tasks/job description:

The Professor in Innovative Structural Design heads the Chair of Innovative Structural Design, part of the Structural Design unit. This Chair aims to conduct research on the topology of structures and the development and research of new structure types. Furthermore, the Chair of Innovative Structural Design is expected to make scientific contributions to the sustainability of the built environment, its buildings and their structures and construction possibilities. From this point of view, the so-called “Integrated Lifecycle Design" of building structures, the technical and functional service life of the building structure, requirements for building deconstruction, demountable buildings and structures for flexible buildings will be researched. The Chair should also carry out research on generative design. Implementation of structural design aspects in generative design modeling is essential to guarantee useful structural solutions and to achieve structural optimization in the future. 

Cooperation, innovation and a multi-disciplinary approach are key words in the research program of the Structural Design unit within which the different research groups collaborate closely on achieving innovative research. They are

Scholarships for Postgraduate Studies in Energy and Environment in the UK and U.S.

IBERDROLA Foundation presents the First Round of Grants for Graduate Studies in Energy and Environment in the UK and U.S.. The training areas covered are:

• Renewable energy
• Emissions management and carbon sequestration
• Energy efficiency
• Environment and biodiversity
• Sustainable energy system

This invitation is estimated that up to 14 awards for the period 2011-2012, for postgraduate studies at the following universities or technology centers in British and American:

• University of Edinburgh (UK)
• Imperial College of London (United Kingdom)
• University of Strathclyde (UK)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT (USA)
• Rochester Institute of Technology - RIT (USA)
• University of Maine (United States)

PhD Scholarship in laser material interactions in thin liquid layers (NETHERLANDS)

Project description

Background. Femtosecond lasers are characterized by ultrashort duration pulses (typically 10^-13 s), which when focused, lead to extremely high instant power density. These extreme conditions induce nonlinear absorption phenomena like multi-photon absorption processes that can be a precursor for plasma formation in transparent media. In liquid films, under certain energy and focusing conditions, femtosecond laser pulses can lead to liquid transfer processes involving jet formation. The laser induced jet formation has potential to be applied for the printing of material from a liquid layer. This may open opportunities to direct print materials which cannot be printed with established ink-jet printing techniques.

Project objective. In this project we will first establish suitable experimental techniques to study the laser material interactions in thin liquid layers resolved in time. The results of a pre-study can be found in D. Tiwari et al, Applied Physics Express 3 (2010) 127101 The project aims for deeply investigating and understanding the phenomena of bubble formation and jet formation to be able to judge and propose potential applications in the field of printing of materials

3 PhD-Positions on Graphene: a new transistor device and a sensitive gas sensor

There are 3 Phd positions available:

1. One of the Phd-positions is focussed on a revolutionary design and realization of large array of “gated transistor” devices using much simpler lithographic methods compared to the state-of-the-art Si technology.

2. The second Phd position is related to investigate the existence of ferromagnetism on H-covered graphene: a fundamental experimental study making use of spin-polarized Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy(STS) and photoemission spectroscopy.

3. The third Phd position is related to developing a highly sensitive gas sensor from grapheme, based on the extraordinary properties of graphene, e.g. the planar structure, the high conductivity, the low noise characteristic in graphene and the excellent low ohmic contacting option. The goal is to study and improve the sensitivity and the selectivity of clean (exfoliated and epitaxial graphene) and functionalized graphene for gas sensing and quantify the role of structural defects on the sensitivity. This will be studied in combination Raman spectroscopy with single molecule sensitivity in combination with Scanning Tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS).

In the group M2N we are presently investigating graphene, in particular the role of structural defects on the mobility and the interaction of electrons with phonons and plasmons. Besides graphene, there is strong activity in understanding the inelastic electron tunnelling mechanism for adsorbed molecules on surfaces, experimentally as well as theoretically. A large part of the group is involved in the design and improvement of the functionality of organic solar-cells and organic electronics.

The project involves a detailed investigation of the electronic structure of graphene grown on SiC substrates. In particular, the graphene/SiC interface

Associate Professor Position in Biomedical Image Analysis (NETHERLANDS)

Job description

The Department of Biomedical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology seeks an Senior Researcher (associate level, fulltime, tenure track) in the field of Biomedical Image Analysis.

Medical imaging has developed revolutionary, and has become the prime source of information for diagnosis and interventions. The need for sophisticated analysis and visualization algorithms is strongly increasing, not only due to the sheer complexity of the data, now encompassing many modalities and being more and more multi-valued (vector and tensor data, multi-scale, multi-orientation etc.), but also due to the advent of acquisition and visualization of many functional parameters (e.g. strain, diffusivity etc.), the need for image guided surgery and interventions, and the sheer volume of the data.

The Biomedical Image Analysis group, headed by prof. Bart M. ter Haar Romeny, and established in 2001, has developed a solid position in research and teaching in this field, and operates at world-class level. See:http://bmia.bmt.tue.nl. The scientific research in the group BMIA focuses on three closely intertwined areas:

Postdoctoral Fellow, Sustainable Building Materials

Job description:

The scientific research concerns the modelling, design and development of sustainable and durable building materials. In the group materials are developed that are based on secondary raw materials and with additional functionalities, meeting requirements in regard to constructive, chemical, physical and aesthetic properties. Examples of deployed ingredients are fly ashes, silicas, slags, agricultural and industrial wastes, and recycled aggregates, from varying and non-traditional sources. Functionality is introduced by incorporating photocatalytic powder, phase changing materials etc. So far attention was mainly focused on concrete, but the group is rapidly expanding its interest to other materials as well.

PhD Position in Engineering and integration of electrical domain-wall memory devices

Description of the PhD project

Spin-torque based magnetic domain wall (DW) memories can offer large storage densities by storing multiple bits (domain walls) in a single magnetic nanowire. Stacking of the nanowires in a back-end-of-line (BEOL) process may even allow 3D integration. This project emphasizes the engineering and application aspects and focusses on key technological issues of magnetic domain walls such as thermal stability, stabilization of DWs at notches or other pinning centers, reproducibility of motion (influence of line-edge roughness, temperature dependence), critical current density, heating, high-frequency read and write elements, and how these evolve as dimensions are scaled towards sub-100 nm wires. TU/e will contribute by engineering novel materials, e.g. with perpendicular magnetization or low damping, allowing for a unique tunability of damping, spin polarization, and pinning potential, all crucial parameters for the efficiency of future DW memory devices. 

PhD Position in Atomic Layer Deposition for Sensing Applications

The project will be carried out both at the TU/e and Holst Centre at roughly a 50%-50% time base. ALD tools, thin-film analysis techniques and other materials processing steps as well as device integration and characterization tools are available for employment at both locations. 

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a method to synthesize ultrathin and conformal films with an excellent control of thickness and material properties. The method relies on alternate pulsing of two or more precursor vapors into a vacuum chamber. The subsequent saturative and self-limiting chemisorption reactions of these vapors on the substrate surface lead to the deposition of one submonolayer of film per deposition cycle. 

Since the recent introduction of ALD in mainstream CMOS production by Intel

2 Post-doctoral Positions in Micro- and Nanofluidics (NETHERLANDS)

Tasks:

We are soliciting applications for 2 post-doctoral research positions in the field of micro- and nanofluidics. The research objectives are 1) to design and perform experiments elucidating how and to what extent discrete droplets can be routed through nanochannels without excessive volume loss or intermixing and 2) to design and build an experimental setup for the rapid measurement of disjoining pressure, i.e. the effect of Van der Waals forces in ultrathin liquid films. The experimental efforts will be complemented by numerical simulations involving Stokes flow solvers and the lubrication approximation, as well as either level-set, volume-of-fluid, lattice Boltzmann or diffuse-interface methods. Experimental techniques will involve optical interferometry and ellipsometry. It is anticipated that one candidate will focus on numerical modeling and simulations and the other candidate on corresponding experiments.

Postdoc Position in numerical model for film blowing of semi-crystalline polymers

Project description

Film blowing is one of the important polymer shaping processes. Both, material characteristics (molecular weight distribution, molecular architecture, etc.) and processing conditions (temperature history, deformation rates, etc.) determine the final film properties. The interplay between these two (material and process characteristics) is rather complex; especially in the case of semi-crystalline polymers. The non-isothermal, biaxial deformation of the melt, coming out of an annular die, will not only cause an anisotropic crystalline structure but also enhance the crystallization kinetics and determine the morphology of these structures. A detailed general description of the coupling between flow and crystallization is available. The goal of the project is to combine this with a model for the film blowing process so it is possible to predict the resulting crystalline structure.

This project is a collaboration with ExxonMobil, Baytown USA.

Tasks

After a literature study on film blowing, flow induced crystallization and non-linear viscoelastic flow modelling (as far as each of these topics requires) the candidate should get acquainted with in-home software packages for viscoelastic flow simulations. Next a start can be made with the model development. The focus will be on viscoelastic behaviour and a free surface description.Next the crystallization part will be implemented and tested. Here the focus is on the coupling rheology/crystallization. The final numerical simulations will include the analysis of influence processing conditions and rheological parameters on structure development.

Besides a numerical code for film blowing simulations also two journal publications are expected as a result of this project.

Requirements

We are looking for a candidate who meets the following requirements:

• A PhD degree in Physics, Numerical Mathematics or Mechanical Engineering
• A good background in polymer physics and fluid mechanics.
• Some experience with computational fluid dynamics is an advantage
• Excellent communication skills and written/verbal knowledge of the English language

PhD Fellowship in Magneto-Capillary Valving for Biological Lab-on-a-Chip Sample Preparation

PhD topic:

You will study an innovative micro-nanotechnology for integrated biological sample preparation. The concept involves the use of magnetic particles that are transported through several stationary aqueous liquids by magnetic forces. The magneto-capillary valving principle is based on a balance between capillary and magnetic forces (cf. Dulk et al, 14th microTAS conference, 4-7 October 2010). You will unravel the physical characteristics of the valve and determine the biological window of operation. Results of integrated assays will be quantified, modeled, and compared to reference assays. You will be trained in microtechnology (design, fabrication, modeling), physics (systematic experimentation, physical modeling), and assay integration (for proteins, nucleic acids, and cells).

Framework:

Your PhD project is part of the BioMaX collaboration "Novel diagnostic bio-assays based on magnetic particles" within the Marie Curie programme of the European Union. Partners in the BioMaX consortium are EPFL, ESPCI Paris, Univ. Leuven, Univ. Uppsala, Univ. Barcelona, and Philips Research. The MBx group is a member of the center-of-excellence BioNano applications within the

PhD Scholarship in Real-time contact-less vibration detection in lithography systems

Project description:
The PhD position is aimed for design and application of a real-time contact-less distributed vibration detection system based on Near-field acoustic holography (NAH). NAH is a well-known sound source identification technique based on measurements with an array of microphones on a plane (hologram plane) close to the source surface. The array data is then transformed to obtain not only the sound pressure but also the vibration velocity distribution on the source surface. This makes NAH a potentially powerful method for contactless vibration detection. The goal of this PhD project is to extend the NAH formulation to confined spaces and investigate the potential of acoustic array measurements for distributed vibration detection in lithography systems, both numerically and experimentally. For successful accomplishment of the project, a PhD candidate must address problems of sound wave propagation, acoustic field modeling in confined spaces, acoustic signal processing and

PhD Fellowship in HAIRY Bio-inspired hairy surfaces for actuation or sensing

The research of the Polymer Technology group is aimed at bridging the gap between science and technology in the area of polymer processing and design, through the use of experimental and computational tools in the modelling of the full thermo-mechanical history of material (elements) during their formation, processing and final design, to quantitatively predict properties of processed objects.

TasksThe work will, in the end, result in bio-inspired active surfaces covered with micro-hairs that can be actuated or function as sensors. The potential impact of this elegant out-of-clean room, cheap processing route to generate HAIRY surfaces can be large, since the possible applications are numerous. They may for example be used as:

PhD Position in Energy Systems Analysis (Denmark)

Job description

The PhD project is in “Energy Policy Instruments in an EU context” and has special focus on: 

• Harmonized international support of renewable energy sources
• The European emission trading system
• National instruments reconsidered in an international (EU) context

As part of the PhD project the candidate is expected to contribute to teaching at the M.Sc. in sustainable energy at DTU.

Qualifications

You hold a master degree in economics or political science or a similar degree with an academic level equivalent to the master's degree in engineering.

PhD Fellowship in Psychology of safety perception under interactive street lighting conditions

Project description
Street lighting aids people with navigational tasks, and reduces traffic accidents, especially for pedestrians. Additionally, street lighting reduces crime and increases feelings of safety at night. Novel lighting innovations that aim for energy savings, such as intelligent dynamic solutions, should not impede these functions of street lighting. However, little is known about the relationships between adaptive lighting scenarios and feelings of comfort and safety with users on the street. Adaptive light scenarios should be developed, tailored to specific situations, and assessed for various groups of users and circumstances. Conflicts rising from scenarios (e.g. the wishes of two distinct users might conflict) need resolution procedures, etc. The research and the development of interactive lighting scenarios should be based on a sound basis of psychological theory. Empirical testing will take place largely in realistic settings, i.e. field experiments. For this purpose the project has at its disposal an interactive lighting testbed on the TU/e campus and plans are being developed to install a large-scale testbed in an existing neighborhood in the city of Eindhoven.

PostDoc Position in Operations Management (NETHERLANDS)

The School of Industrial Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology is looking for a number of PhD candidates in the area of Operations Management. The group Operations, Planning, Accounting and Control (OPAC) conducts research in the area of Operations Management, with specific emphasis on

• Planning and Control in Manufacturing, Services, and Supply Chains;
• Distribution Logistics;
• Maintenance and Reliability;
• Finance and Accounting, oriented towards operational processes.

Research is generally quantitative in nature, while many of the researchers also engage in empirical research. All research is embedded in Beta, the KNAW-recognized research school for Operations Management & Logistics.

Tasks

The PostDoc researcher will work on a project in the area of Supply Chain Finance. The PostDoc researcher is expected to do research and write research papers within this field, as well as work with the companies in the project consortium. Funding of the position has not yet been formalized, but is expected to materialize within the next weeks.

Professional Doctorate in Software Technology (NETHERLANDS)

Job descriptionThe post-master program Software Technology focuses on software design and systems architecture for the software-intensive systems that occur in the various application domains of the high-tech industry, as exemplified by the multinationals in the greater Eindhoven area. It trains graduates from Computer Science or a related discipline to become the professional software designers and architects whom the industry needs to conceive its new, innovative products and who can participate in or provide technological leadership for its multidisciplinary teams that realize these.

The program spans two years of which the first 15 months are devoted to deepening, broadening and reinforcing Software Technology knowledge and

Postdoc Fellowship in Advanced modelling of gas-turbine combustion

TasksIn the present project several complicated turbulent combustion phenomena are addressed on the level of modelling issues for future design CFD. The project partners are Siemens Power Group and Rolls-Royce and both aero and stationary combustion is considered. For these companies two Ph.D. students will develop new implementations to handle complex phenomena associated with preferential diffusion, complex combustion modes, quenching etc.. The postdoc will guide these developments and takes care of the theoretical framework within the method of Flamelet Generated Manifolds (FGM or FPI) and associated consistency issues.

Requirements
We are seeking an enthusiastic candidate who has been graduated from a PhD program (dr.) in turbulent combustion modelling. The candidate should be familiar with the framework of FGM).  We are aiming for the best candidates that have strong affinity for theory, (consistent) implementation and at the

Assistant Professor Position in Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy

We seek an outstanding young scientist engaged in high impact research, regardless of specific research focus. Candidates with a proven track record in advanced biomedical MR research are particularly invited to apply. The candidate is expected to develop (inter)nationally recognized research lines and to successfully compete for extramural funding. The candidate is expected to teach and develop curricula in the area of biomedical MR as well biomedicine at large. Responsibilities include teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels, supervising MSc- and PhD-students and making appropriate contributions to the management of the group and the department.

Requirements

Candidates should hold a doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related area, with experience and expertise in magnetic resonance imaging and/or spectroscopy.

Research Scholarships Funded by The University of Sussex for Applicants from China, India and the USA

Details are set out below including how to apply.

Scholarships

The Scholarships are available for DPhil (PhD) research

Scholarships provide funding for three years only and must commence in 2011/12.

Scholarships are equivalent to £24,000 over three years.

Scholarships are paid in the form of an £8,000 tuition fee waiver in each of three years.

Eligibility

You must be a national of China, India or the USA.

You must have been normally resident for the last three years in China, India or the USA.

You must have been assessed as liable to pay the overseas (non-UK/EU) rate of fee.

You will have the equivalent of a UK undergraduate degree with either first class or very good upper second class honours. If you are applying for research in the arts or social sciences you will normally need to have the equivalent of a UK masters degree.