Two Ph.D. Positions in Computational Near-Surface Geophysics

The Exploration and Environmental Geophysics Group (EEG) of ETH Zurich has immediate openings for two Ph.D. positions in computational near-surface geophysics. The primary objectives of the projects are centered on seismic and ground-penetrating-radar full waveform inversions (FWI). These techniques have a tremendous potential to address many long-standing near-surface problems of high societal concern. Unfortunately, acquisition and FWI of 3D seismic and GPR data sets are associated with very high costs and require very large computational resources, and the results may still be ambiguous. To address these problems, the two PhD projects will provide a series of developments that will make shallow 3D FWI affordable, both on the acquisition and on the data analysis side, and combined seismic and GPR FWIs will reduce the interpretational ambiguities. Key elements of the two PhD projects include further developments of viscoelastic FWI, optimized model parameterizations, joint FWI of seismic and GPR data, and establishing novel target orientated data acquisition strategies. The usefulness of all these developments will be tested with applications to synthetic data, laboratory experiments in the unique Center for Immersive Wave Experimentation (https://eeg.ethz.ch/research/centre-immersive.html) and field applications. The subdivision of all these tasks into two PhD projects will be made, once the successful candidates have been identified.
The successful candidates should hold a Masters degree in geophysics, physics, mathematics or electrical engineering, and should have a keen interest and preferably some experience in numerical forward modeling and inversion. It is also planned to perform a limited amount of laboratory experimentation and fieldwork in the framework of both projects.
We are a dynamic international research group working on a wide variety of high-profile topics in applied and computational geophysics. The working languages in our group are English and German.
We are looking forward receiving your application (CV, transcripts, name of referees) until May 31, 2022. Please contact Prof. Dr. Hansruedi Maurer ([email protected] ), if you require further information.
Only online applications using https://www.jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOPG_ethz_ZxleMa1zeWatYAXdcp will be considered. We explicitly encourage female candidates to apply. Start dates of the PhD projects are flexible, but we prefer start dates as soon as possible.