13 Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Hamburg, Germany

Research associates will be expected primarily to teach and conduct research. The research associate will also have the opportunity to pursue further academic qualifications, in particular a doctoral dissertation. At least one-third of set working hours will be made available for the research associate’s own academic work.

The tasks include research on precision predictions in Quantum Chromodynamics with applications to colliders. 2 teaching hours p/w.

The five-year project “BioValCat” (Enhanced Biomass Valorisation by Engineering of Polyoxometalate Catalysts), funded by the ERC Consolitator Grant 2022, aims to enable 100% carbon efficiency from complex biomass by developing innovative POM catalyst-solvent systems for aerobic and anaerobic applications and to develop this into an innovative and widely applicable process technology.

Polyoxometalates (POMs), as a unique class of anionic polynuclear metal-oxo clusters with high structural diversity at the atomic level, are highly promising candidates for the selective oxidation of biomass to organic acids. In the field of homogeneously catalysed, selective biomass conversion, POMs are already used intensively. One example for the potential of POMs is the already commercialised OxFA process, in which biomass is oxidatively converted to formic acid in aqueous systems.

Recent research has shown that POM catalysts can completely suppress the undesired total oxidation to CO2 under oxidative conditions when methanol is used as a (co-)solvent. Manipulating molecular catalysts such as POMs in solution by tuning the solvent properties and gas atmospheres introduces a new paradigm in homogeneous-catalysed biomass valorisation technologies. The proposed BioValCat project aims for developing this technology towards an industrial viable biomass valorisation process by laying the foundations for a scalable, safe and economic process for the oxidation of biomass to valuable carboxylic acid esters.

Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications.

 The tasks within the project include the computation of higher order QCD corrections to collider observabales and operator anomalous dimensions as well as phenomenology applications with an eye on the Large Hadron Collider LHC and the forth-coming Electron Ion Collider EIC.

Zooplankton are important consumers in aquatic systems that alter energy fluxes and trophic pathways in pelagic food webs. Chaetognaths and larval fish are traditionally categorized as carnivores but evidence for non-strictly carnivore feeding habits including prey at the lower food-web level have been reported. Traditional gut content analyses provide reliable estimates of hard-bodied taxa while soft-bodied prey items (e.g. protists, gelatinous zooplankton) are difficult to detect. Recent advances in molecular ecology using DNA sequence data allow the identification of predator-prey pairs based on these molecular fingerprints.

In this project, the trophic ecology of chaetgognaths and larval fish in the Southern North Sea will be analysed by establishing on a monthly sampling campaign at Helgoland Roads (German Bight, North Sea) throughout the year. Molecular gut content analysis will be applied to understand the distinct role of microzooplankton in the diets of larval fish and chaetognaths during specific seasons. Obtained sequence data will be compared with existing sequence databases and molecular reference data for protist fractions will be compiled thus providing insights on the degree of omnivory of these consumers. The project will be conducted in collaboration with the ‘Plankton Ecology’ group at Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg (HIFMB)/Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the ‘Shelf Sea Systems Ecology’ group at AWI.

Duties primarily include teaching and research. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications.

Your tasks include conducting research and teaching in clinical psychology and psychological interventions.

Your research tasks involve the planning, implementation and evaluation of projects, the acquisition of third-party funding, and the regular publication of research results. We are seeking applicants whose research interests fit in with the research foci of the department. These lie in the development and maintenance mechanisms of psychotic symptoms as well as their transfer into innovative interventions. Applicants are also expected to contribute to joint projects of the Institute of Psychology and the Faculty’s thematic focus on Mechanisms of Change.

Teaching comprises 9 LVS (weekly teaching units) and will take place in the newly introduced Bachelor and Master of Science degree programs on the basis of the licensing regulations for psychotherapists of February 14, 2020. It will include teaching the basics of clinical psychology in the areas of phenomenology, classification, epidemiology, etiology and course of mental disorders across the lifespan and conveying skills in psychological intervention and prevention. Teaching will be mainly in form of seminars and is expected to include case presentations, practical demonstrations and exercises.

Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications.

In addition to research, associates will be expected to actively participate in the scientific events of the research center and in their organisation.

The successful candidate will conduct research in probability theory. The research will be carried out as part of the DFG Priority Program “Random Geometric Systems” (SPP 2265) and will focus on the study of such systems using Stein’s method and stochastic geometry.

Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications.

We are opening a new research associate position in the attosecond science team at the Center for Free-Electron Laser (CFEL) Science in Hamburg. In the CFEL-ATTO group, we develop advanced attosecond technologies with the aim of tracking and controlling electron dynamics in matter. More specifically, our technology allows us to follow charge migration occurring in electronically excited neutral molecules. In the context of attochemistry, the research associate will have to perform attosecond time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy of UV-excited (chiral) molecules to achieve charge-directed reactivity.

Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications.

For the work in the research project EXPECT – Towards an Integrated Capability to Explain and Predict Regional Climate Changes (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101137656) funded by the EU, we seek a candidate with an interest in seasonal-decadal climate predictions. EXPECT will identify and quantify the mechanisms by which physical processes govern regional climatic changes, including extremes, on inter-annual to multi-decadal time scales. It will do so by exploiting newly available climate simulations and Earth Observations (EOs), and by combining machine learning (ML) with physical methods. The research will target fundamental knowledge gaps related to atmospheric circulation and land-atmosphere interactions, which represent major limitations in current climate predictions and projections, and in particular in understanding changes in European summer extremes.

The applicant will work to use machine-learning techniques to improve the skill of seasonal-decadal predictions of European summer extremes. A particular focus of the successful applicant’s work will be on building machine-learning based analysis and post-processing techniques for seasonal-decadal forecast information. Improving forecast skill includes running dedicated ensemble simulations and analysis with ESM based seasonal-decadal prediction systems, conditioning the predictions on physical boundary conditions.

The Project PalMod Phase III is a project between Universität Hamburg and several other German research institutes and universities, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science (BMBF), to understand Earth system dynamics and variability during the last glacial cycle.

Model simulations in PalMod Phase II with cryosphere-ocean-atmosphere interactions in MPI-ESM have captured some features of the abrupt events of the last deglaciation (Heinrich events, Bølling-Allerød warming, Younger Dryas). Studies of marine sediments show that such abrupt events profoundly affect ocean biogeochemistry. Nevertheless, the cascades of changes in oceanic biogeochemistry have not yet been examined using comprehensive Earth system models with interactive carbon cycle. The planned work will address this knowledge gap. The project will focus on examining the response of the ocean carbon storage and biogeochemical cycles to abrupt events in MPI-ESM projections spanning the last deglaciation and future climate change scenarios with the goal to improve our quantitative understanding of the observed cascades of change.

The project “ICON for coupled carbon cycle climate modelling” (ICON-4C4M) funded through the Extramural Funding programme of the German Weather Service (DWD) aims to integrate state-of-the-art representations of marine (project part ocean at University Hamburg) and terrestrial (project part land at Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry; MPI-BGC) biogeochemistry into the ICON Earth system model. The project will contribute to an enhanced representation of key Earth system components in ICON for climate science applications and thereby provide new insights into the transient climate response of the Earth system to anthropogenic emissions.

The project part at Universität Hamburg will have two main foci. The first one will be to enhance the representation of ocean biogeochemical processes and carbon storage in the Hamburg Ocean Carbon Cycle Model (HAMOCC). An advanced representation of the particle sinking scheme, dynamic riverine fluxes, and carbon isotopes in HAMOCC will be tested and calibrated in the coupled ICON ocean-atmosphere framework. The second task will be to incorporate and test the CO2 tracer in the atmospheric component of ICON to enable interactive representation of air-sea and air-land CO2 fluxes and prognostic representation of CO2 concentration the in the atmosphere.