Postdoctoral researcher / Senior researcher fixed term position at the Finnish Centre for Astronomy
About this role
Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA) invites applications for a three-year postdoctoral/senior researcher position. The starting date is negotiable, but no later than 1st September 2027.
The (FINCA) is a national research institute that takes care of Finnish co-operation with the European Southern Observatory (ESO), practices and co-ordinates high quality astronomical research, and technological development work related to ESO; participates in researcher training; and promotes co-operation of Finnish universities in astronomy.
The ERC-funded BlackHolistic project seeks to create colour movies of black holes and study their astrophysics across scales. The multinational BlackHolistic team is currently building the first single dish mm-wave radio telescope in Africa, the Africa Millimetre Telescope (AMT), which will join the Event Horizon Telescope as well as carry out single dish science. At FINCA BlackHolistic is run jointly by Dr. Elina Lindfors and Dr. Talvikki Hovatta.
Job description
The research concentrates on the physics of relativistic jets launched from accreting supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN). These black hole powered jets are among the most energetic long-lived phenomena in the Universe and despite their ubiquity, many of the fundamental questions regarding their physics are still open. We do not for example understand well their launching and acceleration mechanisms.
Your task will be to develop tools and pipelines to statistically compare astronomical observables (e.g. light curves) from numerical simulations against new multi-messenger observations.
BlackHolistic is an international research project and you will work closely with the research group of Prof. Sera Markoff (University of Cambridge & University of Amsterdam). The Finnish Group has several PhD students and postdocs and an active environment both at University of Turku and Aalto University Metsähovi Radio Observatory. You will be formally employed by U