Doctoral Researcher (Ice Crystal Surface Roughness and Atmospheric Optics) / Väitöskirjatutkija (Il

Doctoral Researcher (Ice Crystal Surface Roughness and Atmospheric Optics) / Väitöskirjatutkija (Ilmakehän jääkiteiden pinnankarheuden ja optiikan tutkimus)

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The Aerosol and Cloud Particle Optics group, part of the Aerosol Physics Laboratory at Tampere University, is recruiting a Doctoral Researcher to join CRYSTAL, a European Research Council (ERC)-funded project that pioneers the use of advanced 3D nano-printing in atmospheric science. CRYSTAL addresses a major unresolved question: how nano- and microscale surface roughness changes the way atmospheric ice crystals scatter sunlight and how cirrus clouds are represented in climate and satellite-observation models.

Job description

As a doctoral researcher, you will investigate the optical response of realistic ice crystal surface roughness using nano-printed test surfaces. Your main responsibility will be to plan and participate in the optical characterization of these surfaces and to analyse polarization-resolved measurements of their bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF). The work combines optics, precision measurement, surface characterization, programming and quantitative data analysis.

You will contribute to selecting and preparing representative ice crystal surface morphologies for nano-printing and to assessing the quality of the fabricated samples. You will develop robust data-processing and quality-control routines and determine how the measured scattering depends on roughness scale, surface anisotropy, illumination and observation geometry, and polarization.

In collaboration with the project's postdoctoral researcher, you will test physically based surface-scattering descriptions, including Harvey-Shack theory and ABg-t