Postdoctoral Researcher for Experiments in Swarming Dynamics of Living Swimmers
Postdoctoral Researcher for Experiments in Swarming Dynamics of Living Swimmers
Aalto University - School of Science
Espoo, Finland
A Postdoctoral Researcher position is available in the Living Matter group of Prof. Matilda Backholm at the Department of Applied Physics at Aalto University. The position is fully funded by the ERC project SWARM. Our research focuses on developing new cutting-edge techniques to probe the forces and flow in small living systems, such as microswimmers, plant roots, and immune cells. Our research is interdisciplinary and curiosity-driven, and we work in an inclusive and collaborative manner.
Your role and goals
You will work in the field of soft, living, and fluid matter physics. We are looking for either a skilled experimentalist or theoretician. As an experimentalist, you would perform technically challenging swimming force experiments with tiny living organisms using a micropipette force sensor (Backholm et al., Nature Protocols 2019). As a theoretician, you would develop advanced theoretical models to describe our experimental finding. In both roles, you would also develop advanced image analysis schemes to analyse the experimental data. Your focus will be to investigate the effect of nearby swimmers on the swimming dynamics of brine shrimps. You will be expected to take charge of your own research project, conduct your work with high scientific quality, and actively communicate your problems, mistakes, and scientific findings to the rest of the team. We help each other to succeed in making exciting new scientific discoveries.
Your network and team
As the PI of the group, I (Prof. Backholm) will be your main supervisor. Together we will design your work so that it fits your background and interests and provides the best springboard for your future career. You will also work in close collaboration with other postdocs and doctoral researchers of our team. The Living Matter group currently consists of four postdocs, three doctoral researchers and a few undergraduate researchers. We work together and support each other.
Your experience and ambitions
It is important that you can work both independently as well as in a team. You should have a strong internal motivation for performing research and driving a project to finalization. The working language of the group is English, and we expect all our team members to have very strong written and oral English skills to ensure efficient communication and collaboration. Finnish language is not required.
Other requirements
- PhD degree in Physics with excellent academic track records;
- Experience in biological, fluid, or soft matter physics research.
At least one of these:
- Experimental physics background:
- Capacity to work independently in an experimental lab, perform your own measurements and analyse your data;
- Experience or interest in building your own instruments.
- Theoretical physics background:
- Experience in independently developing analytical or numerical fluid mechanics models to describe (low Re) swimming dynamics and hydrodynamic interactions;
- Capacity to collaborate with experimentalists to model their data.
- Experience with using e.g. MATLAB for image analysis;
- Capacity to work in an inclusive and respectful manner.
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