08 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Aalto University, Finland

The Water and Environmental Engineering research group (WAT: https://www.aalto.fi/en/department-of-built-environment/water-and-environmental-engineering), and its fluvial dynamics research team (lead by Research Fellow and Assistant Professor Eliisa Lotsari), has 1 (or 2, depending on the applications) vacancies for a highly talented and motivated postdoctoral researcher, who is specialist fluvial research, including experiments and/or field work and hydro-morphodynamic modelling in different type of northern river systems. The postdoctoral researcher candidate will study river ice – flow characteristics – sediment transport interactions at different spatial and temporal scales. Methodologically the work can include: (1) harmonized and integrated datasets with field measurements in different northern European river systems, (2) new experimental settings in laboratory flume experiments (with ice), and (3) modelling for upscaling to larger temporal and spatial scales. In doing so, the postdoctoral researcher(s) will overcome the limitations of current data, and tools for analysing and modelling the interactions of river ice, river flow characteristics and sediment transport processes in seasonally ice-covered rivers.

Aalto University invites applications for two postdoctoral researcher positions within the Water and Environmental Engineering Research Group WAT (https://www.aalto.fi/en/department-of-built-environment/water-and-environmental-engineering). The positions are related to our new Digital Waters (DIWA) Flagship (www.digitalwaters.fi) and particularly its Research Theme 5 Transformative Water Management. The postdocs will work on themes related to water resources management and water governance, sustainability and digitalization, with a possibility to contribute also to stakeholder engagement and societal impact work. The positions are planned to include both research and interaction work, with the division between those two tasks agreed together with the selected persons. We therefore encourage applicants from a variety of relevant fields and methodological competence (qualitative and/or quantitative research) as well as relevant competences to apply. The positions will be filled until the end of year 2027.

The postdoctoral researcher will work in the research themes of the Digital Waters (DIWA) Flagship (www.digitalwaters.fi) funded by the Research Council of Finland. The researcher works with the DIWA theme leader, prof. Harri Koivusalo and his team. DIWA Flagship aims to form, facilitate and foster a new generation of the water sector. DIWA enables a transition towards the digital representation of real-world water systems (Digital Twin) to reproduce hydrological storages, their states, fluxes and processes, as well as ecosystem responses with novel options for improved scenario analysis, planning and governance. The candidate would become a part of a multidisciplinary team of experts. In addition to Aalto University, DIWA Flagship includes experts from several Finnish universities and institutes, e.g. University of Oulu, University of Turku, Finnish Environment Institute (Syke), Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, and Finnish Meteorological Institute. The work within DIWA will aim for enhancing water security through digital models, and Digital Twins created from the supersites of the consortium.

Aalto University invites applications for a postdoctoral researcher position within the Water and Environmental Engineering Research Group WAT (https://www.aalto.fi/en/department-of-built-environment/water-and-environmental-engineering). The position is related to our new Digital Waters (DIWA) Flagship, implemented by a multidisciplinary consortium of several universities and research institutes in Finland (www.digitalwaters.fi). DIWA’s goal is to secure water for people and ecosystems through integrated and sustainable practices and novel digital solutions. The postdoc will work on DIWA’s Research Theme 5 ‘Transformative Water Management’, and particularly themes related to past and future changes in large-scale hydrological conditions. The position will be filled until the end of year 2027.

The Ice Mechanics Group at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Aalto University studies how sea ice deforms and fractures in different scales and applications. The importance of research on this topic is enhanced by global warming, which is both increasing the fragmentation of ice and changing the mechanical properties of ice; processes related to mechanical sea ice deformation, such as ice break-ups and ridge building, will become more frequent and stronger. Novel numerical models for sea ice behavior and failure form a central part of the research on this topic and are developed and used by the Ice Mechanics Group.

We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our research group at the interphase between organic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, and photoresponsive molecular materials. We are interested in the structure-function relationship of molecular chromophores. In this position, you will be developing a novel family of dyes based on the aggregation induced phenomenon, targeting to achieve photo response between their on and off emitting state.

Water and Environmental Engineering Research Group is seeking a highly motivated individual for a fixed, 3-year position. The post-doctoral researcher will be part of the Water and Environmental Engineering research group (more info: Water and Environmental Engineering | Aalto University) The research group carries out multi-disciplinary applied research on water engineering aiming at functional and sustainable societies.  

The water and environmental engineering research group contributes to research and offers teaching under following themes: water and wastewater engineering, water and development, water resources management and environmental hydraulics. The group is part of the Sustainable cities -bachelor programme and offers its own Master programme on Water and environmental engineering (WAT). The group consists at the moment of six professors, one university lecturer, one university teacher, two staff scientists, post-doctoral reserachers and doctoral researcher all together about 40 persons. The group operates a well-equipped water laboratory with a pilot hall. Several pilots for physico-chemical and biological treatment processes are in active use in teaching and research.

You will work in the field of soft, living, and fluid matter physics. We are looking for either a skilled experimentalist or theoretician. As an experimentalist, you would perform technically challenging swimming force experiments with tiny living organisms using a micropipette force sensor (Backholm et al., Nature Protocols 2019 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-018-0110-x). As a theoretician, you would develop advanced theoretical models to describe our experimental finding. In both roles, you would also develop advanced image analysis schemes to analyse the experimental data. Your focus will be to investigate the effect of nearby swimmers on the swimming dynamics of brine shrimps. You will be expected to take charge of your own research project, conduct your work with high scientific quality, and actively communicate your problems, mistakes, and scientific findings to the rest of the team. We help each other to succeed in making exciting new scientific discoveries.