09 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stockholm University, Sweden

Over its long geologic history, the Earth’s overall habitability has been governed by the chemical alteration of silicate minerals, a reaction that buffers pCO₂ and climate. While terrestrial silicate weathering is widely appreciated, marine silicate changes have long been considered insignificant in the big picture. However, this paradigm is being challenged by recent studies. This project will investigate the effectiveness of silicate weathering in fixing carbon as carbonate minerals using field observations and laboratory incubation experiments.

The position will be associated with the projects: “Carbon Loss In Plants, Soils and Oceans” (CALIPSO, https://exeterdesignstudio.co.uk/calipso/) and “Soil microbial responses to land use and climatic changes in the light of evolution” (SMILE, www.su.se/english/news/stefano-manzoni-receives-erc-consolidator-grant-1.531350). Both projects investigate how soil processes and biota drive the cycles of carbon and nutrients, aiming to develop and test models based on optimality theories. Collaborations with several partners across Europe are envisioned, providing a unique opportunity for networking.

The position falls under the broad theme “Nanoporous materials for sustainable solutions”, and will focus on the synthesis and development of new switchable metal-cyanide frameworks and metal-organic frameworks with eventual applications within sensing, electronics, and purification. The postdoctoral fellow is expected to synthesise new materials, characterise their structure, and investigate the magnetic properties using advanced techniques. You will join a newly started, small research group, where creativity and flexibility are valued. We strive to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels welcome. This recruitment is connected to the Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability (WISE), wise-materials.org. WISE, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, is the largest-ever investment in materials science in Sweden and will encompass major efforts at Sweden’s foremost universities over the course of 10 years. The vision is a sustainable future through materials science. Read more: https://wise-materials.org.

The postdoctoral fellows will conduct original research on time-domain astronomy, with an emphasis on our upcoming involvement in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). One position, with Ragnhild Lunnan, is funded by an ERC starting grant; the other two positions, with Jesper Sollerman, is funded by a Wallenberg Foundation research grant and will also involve participating in transient classification with the Nordic Optical Telescope as part of Stockholm University’s in-kind contributions to the LSST project. The successful candidates will be part of the Oskar Klein Centre (OKC; www.okc.albanova.se) in Stockholm, a rich scientific environment that comprises more than a hundred researchers working in both theory and experiment in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics and particle physics. The OKC hosts a vibrant research program on dark matter, dark energy, transient and multimessenger astrophysics, galaxy evolution, structure formation, and related particle physics questions. Postdoctoral fellows are also welcome to participate in Scientific Programs at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, Nordita.

The Postdoctoral fellow will work within the VR-funded project ”Tephrochronology of Sweden – tying the bag together”. The aim of the project is to get a better understanding of rapid climate changes during the Late Quaternary and to compare climate signals preserved in different high-resolution climate archives. Time-synchronous tephra markers from volcanic eruptions will be used to line up palaeoclimate records to test hypotheses regarding synchronous or non-synchronous responses to climate change and to investigate changes in the marine reservoir effect over time.

The research project is entitled, “Breaking the Inequality-Crime Cycle: Biases in Police Decisions, ‘What Works’ in Prison, and Firm Demand for Workers with Criminal Records”. The project is funded by the European Research Council with Prof. Randi Hjalmarsson (Gothenburg University) as the PI and Prof. Matthew Lindquist as the local research coordinataor at SOFI, Stockholm University. Economic inequality and segregation imply vastly unequal opportunities in many dimensions – the labor market, healthcare, informal networks, exposure to police – that can impact the chances of ending up in trouble with the law. Once caught in the justice system, it can be hard to break free, especially if a criminal record increases the barriers to employment. This cycle of crime and economic inequality can even be perpetuated across generations, if the impacts of a criminal record spill-over to an offender’s family members.  This three-part agenda considers multiple points at which the cycle can potentially be broken, including (i) police decision making and the role of training, (ii) prison reforms and prison care, including healthcare, and (iii) the role of employment opportunities – or lack thereof – for individuals with criminal records. This final part will emphasize both the potential role of firm hiring decisions and offender informal networks. The core of this economics of crime agenda is thus at the intersection of literatures within labor economics, health economics, and networks and peer effects.

The position will be associated with the project Black Holes from Core-Collapse Supernovae. This project aims at the development and execution of state-of-the-art (and next generation) computational tools for simulating core-collapse supernovae, with a particular focus on black hole formation and the multi-messenger signals produced from these extreme environments.

The postdoctoral position is part of the research programme “Sustainable synergies” (www.su.se/english/research/research-projects/sustainable-synergies). The aim of the programme is to study how social policy and the welfare state can be developed to support a sustainable working life for everyone, based on both internationally comparative research and in-depth analyses of Sweden and the Nordic countries. In focus are the transitions that individuals make during their working life (for instance between work and parenting leave, or between studies and work), and the programme examines how the interplay between different social policies can support successful transitions for different groups in the labour market.