PDRA in Galaxy Clustering infrastructure with the Rubin Observatory

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Galaxy Clustering infrastructure with the Rubin Observatory.

The post is available initially for a fixed-term duration of 24 months. Once the first appointment finishes, the Department of Physics, at Imperial College will be looking to appoint a further 2-year position.

The post holder will work with Prof. David Alonso (Oxford), and Dr. Boris Leistedt (Imperial) developing novel methods and infrastructure to characterise and mitigate the impact of large-scale structure systematics in photometric galaxy clustering data from the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The work will also focus on the production of the galaxy clustering data products that will form the basis of the science extracted from the first data releases of LSST. Good programming experience, an enthusiasm for coding, statistics, and data analysis, and the ability to work in a large collaboration are particularly relevant to this post.

The successful candidate will develop a strong profile within the Dark Energy Science Collaboration, where most of this work will be carried out. They will also become members of the Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics (BIPAC) at Oxford, and will be encouraged to collaborate with other members of the institute.

The successful candidate will work as part of the Rubin Observatory Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC). In particular, much of the work will be carried out within the Large Scale Structure working group, and in tight collaboration with other groups in the DESC. The work will involve the development of methods to quantify and mitigate the impact of observational systematics in cosmological clustering data from photometric surveys, leveraging the use of source injection techniques to map said systematics, and implementing linear and non-linear deprojection techniques to account for them in the final data vector. These techniques will be implemented in the data analysis pipeline of the DESC, and applied to the first data releases from Rubin to obtain robust galaxy clustering measurements.

Besides their work within DESC, the candidate will take part in the academic life of BIPAC and the astrophysics group at Oxford.

Candidates should have experience working in collaboration, contributing to publications and scientific presentations, and being able to contribute new ideas for research projects.

Applicants should possess, or be close to obtaining a doctorate in physics or a related field and ideally a strong background in astrophysics and/or statistics, and good coding experience. 

Previous experience in the field of Cosmology, Computational Astrophysics, and Machine Learning will be an advantage.

The post-holder will have the opportunity to teach if desired.

Please direct enquiries about the role to David Alonso ([email protected] ) and Boris Leistedt ([email protected] ).