03 Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Bern, Switzerland

The Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) is dedicated to producing standardized, high-precision, long-term observations to advance our understanding of global biogeochemical cycles and to provide essential information on greenhouse gases. We are seeking a motivated highly postdoctoral researcher to manage the University of Bern’s contributions to the Swiss branch of ICOS (ICOS-CH) at the Jungfraujoch high altitude research station. As a Class 1 Atmospheric Station and the highest station in the ICOS network, Jungfraujoch offers a unique opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge climate research.

ICOS data streams at Jungfraujoch encompass measurements of greenhouse gases (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O) performed both in situ and via flask sampling, meteorological data, isotopic analyzes (¹³C-CO₂, ¹⁴C-CO₂), and background atmospheric components such as O₂:N₂ :Ar ratios. The selected postdoc will collaborate with technical staff to maintain the quality of these ongoing measurement time series, and will lead the interpretation, dissemination, and publication of findings. Additional responsibilities may include supervising student theses, teaching, outreach, and fostering innovation within the ICOS network.

This SNSF-funded project aims to develop and investigate new notions of group knowledge in multi-agent systems. The two classic forms of group knowledge are common knowledge and distributed knowledge. We will devise novel variants of these notions, which are important for distributed computing, and study their logical and mathematical properties.

One part of our project deals with eventual common knowledge (ECK), which is a form of common knowledge that is relevant for the epistemic analysis of many applications. However, ECK needs to be better understood from a mathematical and logical perspective.
We will develop axiomatic systems for ECK and investigate its meta-logical properties, such as compactness, finite model property, etc. We will then study the relationship between task solvability and the properties of the corresponding form of ECK. In particular, we will establish the precise connection of ECK and the Firing Rebels with Relay problem, which is a particularly interesting case in distributed computing.

The second part of the project is concerned with novel variants of distributed knowledge. Simplicial models are an essential tool in the area of distributed computing. Recently, it has been observed that simplicial models also provide an interesting semantics for multi-agent epistemic logic. These models focus on the local states of the agents instead of the global state of the system (represented as a possible world). This simplicial semantics makes it possible to represent new forms of distributed knowledge.
Current simplicial models support notions of knowledge. However, in the presence of Byzantine agents, only forms of belief can be obtained, but not knowledge. We will adapt simplicial models to support belief and belief dynamics. Further, we will develop and study an epistemic logic for simplicial sets. This is the most general form of simplicial models. Yet, their logical analysis is still missing.

The University of Bern is seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher for a two-year position in Earth System Modeling with a focus on land vegetation dynamics, jointly hosted by the Climate and Environmental Physics division at the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Geography and affiliated with the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research.

This exciting opportunity focuses on the coupling and development of the Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity Bern3D and the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model LPX-Bern. The successful candidate will play a crucial role in advancing the models and our understanding of Earth system processes and their interactions.