Postdoctoral Research Associate in Superconducting

**Postdoctoral Research Associate in Superconducting Detectors** **(**Job Number**:24001939**)**

Department of Physics

Grade 7: - £37,999 to £45,163 per annum

Fixed Term - Full Time

**Contract Duration**: 17 months

**Contracted Hours per Week**: 35

**Working Arrangements**: This role is full time but we will consider requests for flexible working arrangements including potential job shares

**Closing Date**: 26-Nov-2024, 5:59:00 PM

**Disclosure and Barring Service Requirement**: Not Applicable.

**Durham University**

Durham University is one of the world's top universities with strengths across the Arts and Humanities, Sciences and Social Sciences. We are home to some of the most talented scholars and researchers from around the world who are tackling global issues and making a difference to people's lives.

The University sits in a beautiful historic city where it shares ownership of a UNESCO World Heritage Site with Durham Cathedral, the greatest Romanesque building in Western Europe. A collegiate University, Durham recruits outstanding students from across the world and offers an unmatched wider student experience.

Less than 3 hours north of London, and an hour and a half south of Edinburgh, County Durham is a region steeped in history and natural beauty. The Durham Dales, including the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, are home to breathtaking scenery and attractions. Durham offers an excellent choice of city, suburban and rural residential locations. The University provides a range of benefits including pension and childcare benefits and the University’s Relocation Manager can assist with potential schooling requirements.

**The Department**

The Department of Physics at Durham University is one of the leading UK Physics departments with an outstanding reputation for excellence in teaching, research and employability of our students.

The Department is committed to advancing equality and we aim to ensure that our culture is inclusive, and that our systems support flexible and family-friendly working, as recognized by our Juno Champion and Athena SWAN Silver awards. We recognise and value the benefits of diversity throughout our staff and students.

CfAI has provided major instruments for many of the world’s leading astronomical facilities including the James Webb Space Telescope, William Herschel Telescope, Gemini Telescopes, Southern African Large Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. Major current ground-based instrumentation projects in CfAI include HARMONI and MOSAIC, the first-light spectrograph and multi-object spectrograph for the upcoming 39m diameter Extremely Large Telescope.

**The Role**

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate position in the Superconducting Quantum Detectors group in Durham. The role will be focused on the development of a Kinetic Inductance Detector (KID) based hyperspectral pyramid wave-front sensor for extreme adaptive optics. This project is initially funded as part of a UKRI Infrastructure Fund activity towards early R&D for the ELT-PCS instrument. ELT-PCS is the planetary camera and spectrograph for ESO’s 39-m Extremely Large Telescope.

Through this position you will be making a crucial contribution to the development of this research programme. This role will suit someone who wishes to gain practical experience of taking novel research outputs and developing technologies from them to the level where they can be incorporated into cutting edge scientific instruments. You will be expected to work in close collaboration with other members of CfAI as well as our international partners who have a wide range of scientific and engineering backgrounds.

**Responsibilities**:

- To understand and convey material of a specialist or highly technical nature to the team or group of people through presentations and discussions that leads to the presentation of research papers in conferences, project design reviews and publications.
- To prepare and deliver presentations on research outputs/activities to audiences which may include: research sponsors, academic and non-academic audiences.
- To publish high quality outputs, including papers for submission to peer reviewed journals and papers for presentation at conferences and workshops under the direction of the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder.
- To assist with the development of research objectives and proposals.
- To conduct individual and collaborative research projects under the direction of the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder.
- To work with the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder and other colleagues in the research group, as appropriate, to identify areas for research, develop new research methods and extend the research portfolio.
- To deal with problems that may affect the achievement of research objectives and deadlines by discussing with the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder and offering creative or innovat