07 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Aalto University, Finland

Are you interested in your research having an impact on engineering practice? Are you interested in contributing to a reduction of material use and CO2 emissions in construction? We are now looking for a researcher who would work on an Academy of Finland project developing the Granular Material Point Method and simulate impact compaction and dynamic ground exchange.

Project 1: Gravitational coupling between nonclassical masses

In this project, the goal is to touch a hundred-year-old mystery of physics: Despite its success at describing phenomena in the low-energy limit, quantum mechanics is incompatible with general relativity that describes gravity and huge energies. The interface between these two has remained experimentally elusive, because only the most violent events in the universe have been considered to produce measurable effects due to the plausible quantum behavior of gravity. We aim at detecting gravitational forces for the first time within a quantum system. We use mechanical oscillators loaded by milligram masses and bring two such gravitationally interacting oscillators into nonclassical motional states. Initially, we will measure the gravitational force between gold particles weighing a milligram, representing a new mass scale showing gravitational forces within a system.

Project 2: Quantum acoustics

For quantum technology, integrating acoustic modes into superconducting circuits shows great promise for applications as quantum memory elements, bosonic codes, or in frequency conversion. We are working on High-Overtone Bulk Acoustic (HBAR) resonances that extend through the chip, and couple resonantly to transmon qubits. In ongoing and future work, we are promoting the devices to host several qubits, each coupled one or several HBAR modes. This will allow for creating mechanical entanglement, and is a step towards phononic quantum chips. To realize processing of flying quantum phonons on a chip, we will connect standing HBAR modes into phonon waveguides which can be used to connect qubits.

Project 3: Magneto acoustics

Besides electromechanics, we are building hybrid devices that aim on controlling ferromagnetic magnons using acoustic waves. Owing to the large speed of light, realizing cavity optomechanics in the microwave frequency range requires cavities up to several mm in size, hence making it hard to embed several of them on the same chip. An alternative scheme with much smaller footprint is provided by magneto acoustics, where the electromagnetic cavity is replaced by a magnet undergoing ferromagnetic resonance, and the optomechanical coupling originates from magnetic shape anisotropy. The small footprint of these hybrid devices shows promise for applications in novel signal processing. We use vibrating magnetic nanobeams, or multilayer structures consisting of magnetic and piezoelectric layers. In the latter structures, we couple magnons to longitudinal overtone (HBAR) acoustic modes, and to surface acoustic waves.

You will be developing superhydrophobic surfaces that will be used for single cell labelling and other biomedical applications. Your work will contribute towards the fields of biotechnology and nanoscience with the aim of improving medical diagnostics and single cell analysis. Your task will include developing and fabricating micro- and nanoscale superhydrophobic surfaces and devices. You will also work together with collaborators on developing the biomedical applications.

We are looking for two highly motivated Postdoctoral Researchers to join research projects supported by the Academy of Finland. In this position, you will join multidisciplinary initiatives strategically designed to establish the scientific and engineering principles supporting the Circular Economy by combining knowledge on material sciences and process engineering.

The Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis https://math.aalto.fi/en/ is looking for a postdoctoral candidate in the area of mathematical coding theory and its applications to federated learning, especially with a view towards data privacy. The research will be supervised by Dr. Ragnar Freij-Hollanti and Prof. Camilla Hollanti, together with an international team, within the framework of a joint project with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden (Prof. Alexandre Graell i Amat). The project is funded jointly by the Wallenberg Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) in Sweden and Aalto University in Finland. 

The group is looking for a postdoctoral researcher for an ongoing research project to develop novel biobased barrier solutions. The group has several ongoing projects related to surface chemistry of lignocellulosics, and you are expected to instruct MSc students and doctoral candidates with planning experiments and writing scientific papers.