Cardiff Gravitational Physics group (http://www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk/research/gravity/) is seeking applications from highly motivated and competitive candidates to fill two STFC-funded postdoctoral positions. Both positions involve research into detection and measurement of gravitational waves in data from Advanced LIGO, GEO-HF and Advanced Virgo detectors and using the results to address a range of questions in fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. Candidates are expected to take part in the development of algorithms that help improve searches for gravitational-wave signals in detector data and extract astrophysical and cosmological information from detected events.
Current members of the group include academics Stephen Fairhurst, Leonid Grishchuk (emeritus), Mark Hannam, B.S. Sathyaprakash, Bernard Schutz (part time), and Patrick Sutton, three postdoctoral fellows and eight PhD students.
The Group cofounded the British-German GEO600 collaboration, is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and is involved in the planning of the space-based LISA and the third generation Einstein Telescope (ET) Observatory.
Group members play leading roles within the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, in particular in gravitational-wave searches for compact binary coalescences, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and other transient sources. The Group’s research interests also include modelling binary black hole orbits using analytical and numerical relativity and their gravitational wave emission, strong field tests of gravity, development of algorithms and software to search for gravitational waves and quantum processes in the early Universe – specifically cosmic microwave and gravitational wave backgrounds.
The positions are available initially for a period of two years, extendible to up to four years depending on performance. The posts are available from 1 March 2012, but the precise starting date is negotiable.