Vacancies & Opportunities

PhD position "Constraining the Multiplicity of Supernovae Progenitors through Interferometric Observations"

The MULTIPLES project

Throughout the Universe, the dynamics and chemical evolution of spiral galaxies like our Milky Way are largely controlled by the lives and deaths of stars with masses many times that of the Sun. The evolution of these massive stars, in turn, is highly regulated by their multiplicity and by the mass and angular momentum exchanged through binary interaction, and by the huge amounts of mass expelled from their surfaces by means of powerful starlight-driven wind outflows. These fundamental properties critically determine how these massive stars live and die and control the nature and properties of the compact remnants – neutron stars and black holes – that are left behind. In this context, the MULTIPLES project aims at constraining the multiplicity properties of massive stars across their entire life cycle, as well as to investigate the origin of close massive binaries and to characterize the nature and frequency of post-interaction products in populations of massive stars.

The position

Through an ERC-CoG, the KU Leuven Institute of Astrophysics is advertising a PhD position. The selected candidate will join the MULTIPLES / MASSIVE STAR team (6 PhDs, 3 PDs) under the supervision of Prof. Hugues Sana and will work as part of an international network of collaborators. The advertised position covers the following topic: "High-angular resolution observations of massive stars". In this project, the selected applicant will use new and archival data to investigate the multiplicity properties of different class of massive stars in the Milky Way using high-angular resolution techniques with an emphasis on optical long-baseline interferometry. The candidate will investigate the impact and significance of multiplicity on the formation and evolution of massive stars, as well as the role and frequency of triples and higher order multiple systems. The observational constraints will be compared to those obtained at other mass ranges, metallicities and evolutionary stages to investigate the evolutionary connections between different populations of massive stars and their contributions to core-collapse supernovae, gamma-ray burst and gravitational waves progenitors.

The Host Institute

The Institute of Astronomy of KU Leuven in Belgium is a vibrant research group of some 65 scientists, engineers, and administrative staff (fys.kuleuven.be/ster), including 6 full-time and 3 part-time professors. The institute is an expertise centre in stellar physics and active in several international consortia and collaborations, involving telescopes at observatories worldwide and in space. Members of the institute have access to high-performance computing facilities at KU Leuven. The IoA is responsible for the organisation of the 2-year Master in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Faculty of Science and operates the 1.2m Mercator telescope at La Palma Observatory, Canary Islands. The institute has a long tradition in instrumental, observational, and theoretical studies of stellar evolution. The successful candidate will enter a young and motivated group studying binary evolution. Regularly, each member of the group present his recent advances as well as comments on a recent publication in the field of interest.

The Contract

The selected PhD student will be offered a 2-year contract, once renewable with 2 more years after positive evaluation. The salary will be commensurate to the standard scale for PhD students in Belgium; it includes social and medical insurance as well as pension rights. The foreseen starting date is October 1st 2019 but can be negotiated. The successful PhD applicant will have to register at, and comply with, the regulations of the Arenberg Doctoral School of the Leuven University. Good command of the English language is a requirement to be approved by the doctoral school. The successful PhD applicant will follow a doctoral programme including personal training in management, science communication, and teaching. As part of the doctoral requirements, the students will have to take up a teaching task of at maximum 4 hours per week in one of the Bachelor (in Dutch) or Master (in English) programmes. PhD students at the Institute of Astronomy are required to perform at least one Mercator observing run of 10 nights per year for the pooled long- term monitoring programmes.

The starting date shall be between 1 September and 1 November 2019.

Requirements and Instructions to Apply

PhD applicants must hold a M.Sc. degree in physics, astrophysics or mathematics or else own an equivalent diploma. The degree must be dated at the latest one month before the position can be taken up. For PhD students. Expertise in astrophysics is an asset but not a requirement. Similarly, expertise in optical/infrared interferometry and/or massive stars is an asset but not a requirement. Proficiency in English is required.

The application package should be sent as one single PDF containing

• (i) a curriculum vitae, with a publication list if relevant;
• (ii) a statement of interest (max. one page);
• (iii) a summary of research experience (max. 2 pages);
• (iv) copies of university grades, certificates and/or diplomas; a list of all master courses with their number of study points and the individual scores obtained as well as the yearly averages
• (v) names and contact details of 2 experts who are prepared to send confidential recommendation letters should they be requested to do so. The selection committee will send out requests for such letters for those applicants on the short-list after an initial ranking. The short-listed applicants will be invited for an interview (live or via skype).

The application material should be sent by e-mail to Clio.Gielen@kuleuven.be with subject “PhD-MULTIPLES-applicantname” latest by May 2nd 2019.

Applications that do not strictly follow these guidelines will not be considered.

PhD position in the field of Second generation protoplanetary discs around evolved binaries

The Position

The Institute of Astrophysics of the KU Leuven (Belgium) seeks a highly-motivated excellent PhD candidate ready to complement our team in our project to investigate binary interaction physics in low- to intermediate mass stars using high angular resolution techniques.

The impact of binarity on the evolution of low- to intermediate mass stars is an important yet poorly understood domain of stellar astrophysics. This project focuses on those interacting systems where one of the components has gone through a giant star phase. At the end of their life some binary stars form Keplerian discs of gas and dust with similar properties to the planet-forming discs around young stars (also called protoplanetary discs). Around evolved binaries, these scaled-up versions of protoplanetary discs form as the result of an unconstrained binary interaction process taking place at the end of the asymptotic giant branch evolution of the initially most massive star. Dynamical interactions between the binary and its circumbinary disc strongly influence the evolution of these objects. However, these interactions are poorly constrained and the discs structure, dispersal and evolution remain elusive.

With this project we focus on the very inner structure and aim at spatially resolving all building blocks of these systems and their interactions. We will use a combination of very specific observational data as well as state-of-the art radiative transfer modelling tools. This PhD project is embedded into a larger research project for which we recently obtained a large programme of observations, called “Inspiring”, at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of the European Southern Observatory. This large programme aims to image at an astronomical unit scale the disc-binary interactions in post-AGB binary systems. This research will open new windows to study, in space and time, dust sublimation physics, disc-binary interactions, and circumstellar disc evolution.

The student will be involved in writing observing proposals, data reduction and analysis, detailed modelling and astrophysical interpretation of the results. Prior knowledge in high angular resolution astrophysics, radiative transfer modeling and/or stellar evolution would be an asset.

Additional information can be obtained by contacting Prof. Hans Van Winckel (Hans.VanWinckel@kuleuven.be) or Dr. Jacques Kluska (Jacques.Kluska@kuleuven.be)

The Host Institute

The Institute of Astronomy of KU Leuven in Belgium is a vibrant research group of some 65 scientists, engineers, and administrative staff (fys.kuleuven.be/ster), including 6 full-time and 3 part-time professors. The institute is an expertise centre in stellar physics and active in several international consortia and collaborations, involving telescopes at observatories worldwide and in space. Members of the institute have access to high-performance computing facilities at KU Leuven. The IoA is responsible for the organisation of the 2-year Master in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Faculty of Science and operates the 1.2m Mercator telescope at La Palma Observatory, Canary Islands. The institute has a long tradition in instrumental, observational, and theoretical studies of stellar evolution. The successful candidate will enter a young and motivated group studying binary evolution. Regularly, each member of the group present his recent advances as well as comments on a recent publication in the field of interest.

The Contract

The selected PhD student will be offered a 2-year contract, once renewable with 2 more years after positive evaluation. The salary will be commensurate to the standard scale for PhD students in Belgium; it includes social and medical insurance as well as pension rights.

The successful PhD applicants will have to register at, and comply with, the regulations of the Arenberg Doctoral School of the KU Leuven. Good command of the English language is a requirement to be approved by the doctoral school. The successful PhD applicants will follow a doctoral programme including personal training in management, science communication, and teaching. As part of the doctoral requirements, the students will have to take up a teaching task of at maximum 4 hours per week in one of the Bachelor (in Dutch) or Master (in English) programmes. PhD students at IoA are also required to perform at least one Mercator observing run of 10 nights per year for the pooled IoA long-term monitoring programmes.

The starting date shall be between 1 September and 1 November 2019.

Requirements and Instructions to Apply

PhD applicants must hold a M.Sc. degree in physics/astrophysics/mathematics or equivalent, at the latest one month before the position can be taken up. Expertise in observational astrophysics, data reduction/analysis, numerical simulations and binary interaction physics is an asset but not a requirement. Proficiency in English is required.

The application package should be sent as one single PDF containing

• (i) a curriculum vitae, with a publication list if relevant;
• (ii) a statement of interest (max. one page);
• (iii) a brief description of research interests and relevant experience (max. one page);
• (iv) copies of university grades, certificates and/or diplomas;
• (v) names and contact details of 2 experts who are prepared to send confidential recommendation letters should they be requested to do so. The selection committee will send out requests for such letters for those applicants on the short-list after an initial ranking. The short-listed applicants will be invited for an interview (live or via skype).

The application material should be sent by e-mail to Clio.Gielen@kuleuven.be with subject “PhD-INSPIRING-applicantname” latest by June 1th 2019. Interviews will take place in June 2019. Final decision on the selected candidates will be taken latest July 2019.

Applications that do not strictly follow these guidelines will not be considered.

PhD position in theoretical asteroseismology

The Position

PARADISE (Pushing AsteRoseismology to the next level with TESS, GaiA and the Sloan DIgital Sky SurvEy) is a new 6-year research project in stellar astrophysics, funded by KU Leuven and supervised by Prof. Conny Aerts, Dr. Joris De Ridder, Dr. Andrew Tkachenko, and Prof. Tim Van Hoolst. It focuses on rotating single and binary stars of intermediate and high mass, revealing non-radial oscillations in space photometry. Combining temporal photometric data from the TESS space mission, astrometric information from the Gaia satellite, and ground-based spectroscopy from the SDSS-V survey, the project aims to probe stellar interiors as well as deduce tidal evolution in close binaries. This will be done by deriving angular momentum and element transport profiles for thousands of stars with a broad range in metallicity.

As part of the project, a PhD student will search for evidence of non-linear resonant mode coupling in Kepler/TESS data of young unevolved gravity-mode pulsators. The PhD student will be embedded in a dedicated research team of PhD students and postdocs and will be co-supervised by Prof. Van Hoolst and Prof. Aerts. The student will apply and further develop the theory of non-linear asteroseismology to improve our understanding of physical properties of the stellar interior. He/She will also investigate if non-linear stellar modelling modifies the results for the interior rotation, overshooting and mixing profiles derived from forward modelling done in a linear framework.

The Host Institute

The Institute of Astronomy of KU Leuven in Belgium is a vibrant research group of some 65 scientists, engineers, and administrative staff (fys.kuleuven.be/ster), including 6 full-time and 3 part-time professors. The institute is an expertise centre in stellar physics and active in several international consortia and collaborations, involving telescopes at observatories worldwide and in space. Members of the institute have access to high-performance computing facilities at KU Leuven. The IoA is responsible for the organisation of the 2-year Master in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Faculty of Science and operates the 1.2m Mercator telescope at La Palma Observatory, Canary Islands. The institute has a long tradition in instrumental, observational, and theoretical studies of stellar evolution.

The Contract

The selected PhD students will be offered a 2-year contract, once renewable with 2 more years after positive evaluation. The salary will be commensurate to the standard scale for PhD students in Belgium; it includes social and medical insurance as well as pension rights. The foreseen starting date is between 3 and 16 September 2019.

The successful PhD applicants will have to register at, and comply with, the regulations of the Arenberg Doctoral School of the KU Leuven. Good command of the English language is a requirement to be approved by the doctoral school. The successful PhD applicants will follow a doctoral programme including personal training in management, science communication, and teaching. As part of the doctoral requirements, the students will have to take up a teaching task of at maximum 4 hours per week in one of the Bachelor (in Dutch) or Master (in English) programmes. PhD students at IoA are also required to perform at least one Mercator observing run of 10 nights per year for the pooled IoA long-term monitoring programmes.

Requirements and Instructions to Apply

PhD applicants must hold a M.Sc. degree in physics/astrophysics/mathematics or equivalent, at the latest one month before the position can be taken up. Expertise in asteroseismology is an asset but not a requirement.

Proficiency in English is required. The application package should be sent as one single PDF containing

• (i) a curriculum vitae, with a publication list if relevant;
• (ii) a statement of interest (max. one page, including a brief description of research interests and relevant experience);
• (iii) copies of university grades, certificates and/or diplomas;
• (iv) names and contact details of 2 experts who are prepared to send confidential recommendation letters should they be requested to do so.

The application material should be sent by e-mail to Clio.Gielen@kuleuven.be with subject “PhD-PARADISE-theory-applicantname” latest by June 15th 2019. Interviews (in person or via Skype) will take place on June 24-25th 2019. Final decision on the selected candidates will be taken on July 4th 2019.

Applications that do not strictly follow these guidelines will not be considered.

PhD position in observational asteroseismology

The Position

PARADISE (Pushing AsteRoseismology to the next level with TESS, GaiA and the Sloan DIgital Sky SurvEy) is a new 6-year research project in stellar astrophysics, funded by KU Leuven and supervised by Prof. Conny Aerts, Dr. Joris De Ridder, Dr. Andrew Tkachenko, and Prof. Tim Van Hoolst. It focuses on rotating single and binary stars of intermediate and high mass, revealing non-radial oscillations in space photometry. Combining temporal photometric data from the TESS space mission, astrometric information from the Gaia satellite, and ground-based spectroscopy from the SDSS-V survey, the project aims to probe stellar interiors as well as deduce tidal evolution in close binaries. This will be done by deriving angular momentum and element transport profiles for thousands of stars with a broad range in metallicity.

The PhD student will be embedded in a dedicated research team of PhD students and postdocs and will be co-supervised by Dr. De Ridder and Prof. Aerts. He/She will be involved in the detection of non-radial oscillations, sample selection, and extraction of observed asteroseismic properties from photometric time series. The student will then apply and further develop statistical and machine learning methodology to jointly model the asteroseismic, astrometric, and spectroscopic data of thousands of stars. The developed modelling techniques will be applied and tuned to a large sample of gravity-mode pulsators observed by Kepler and TESS, to improve our understanding of stellar interiors.

The Host Institute

The Institute of Astronomy of KU Leuven in Belgium is a vibrant research group of some 65 scientists, engineers, and administrative staff (fys.kuleuven.be/ster), including 6 full-time and 3 part-time professors. The institute is an expertise centre in stellar physics and active in several international consortia and collaborations, involving telescopes at observatories worldwide and in space. Members of the institute have access to high-performance computing facilities at KU Leuven. The IoA is responsible for the organisation of the 2-year Master in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Faculty of Science and operates the 1.2m Mercator telescope at La Palma Observatory, Canary Islands. The institute has a long tradition in instrumental, observational, and theoretical studies of stellar evolution.

The Contract

The selected PhD students will be offered a 2-year contract, once renewable with 2 more years after positive evaluation. The salary will be commensurate to the standard scale for PhD students in Belgium; it includes social and medical insurance as well as pension rights. The foreseen starting date is between 3 and 16 September 2019.

The successful PhD applicants will have to register at, and comply with, the regulations of the Arenberg Doctoral School of the KU Leuven. Good command of the English language is a requirement to be approved by the doctoral school. The successful PhD applicants will follow a doctoral programme including personal training in management, science communication, and teaching. As part of the doctoral requirements, the students will have to take up a teaching task of at maximum 4 hours per week in one of the Bachelor (in Dutch) or Master (in English) programmes. PhD students at IoA are also required to perform at least one Mercator observing run of 10 nights per year for the pooled IoA long-term monitoring programmes.

Requirements and Instructions to Apply

PhD applicants must hold a M.Sc. degree in physics/astrophysics/mathematics or equivalent, at the latest one month before the position can be taken up. Expertise in asteroseismology is an asset but not a requirement.

Proficiency in English is required. The application package should be sent as one single PDF containing

• (i) a curriculum vitae, with a publication list if relevant;
• (ii) a statement of interest (max. one page, including a brief description of research interests and relevant experience);
• (iii) copies of university grades, certificates and/or diplomas;
• (iv) names and contact details of 2 experts who are prepared to send confidential recommendation letters should they be requested to do so.

The application material should be sent by e-mail to Clio.Gielen@kuleuven.be with subject “PhD-PARADISE-obs-applicantname” latest by June 15th 2019. Interviews (in person or via Skype) will take place on June 24-25th 2019. Final decision on the selected candidates will be taken on July 4th 2019.

Applications that do not strictly follow these guidelines will not be considered.

Prestigious PhD positions of the Research Fund Flanders (FWO)

Students who recently obtained a master university degree in exact sciences have the opportunity to apply for a 2+2-year PhD scholarship at the Fund for Scientific Research of Flanders on the basis of a well-defined research proposal. The staff members of the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Leuven are willing to support applications for such a research project if it fits into one of the institute's research themes. Candidates having obtained excellent results during their studies are eligible for such a research position. Interested candidates should contact one of the staff members of the institute for the possibilities.

Please note that the application deadline is 1st March, decision of outcome is October, start of fellowship on November 1st. The next call opens December 17 2018.

More information can be found at http://www.fwo.be/en/fellowships-funding/phd-fellowships/phd-fellowship-fundamental-research/

Postdoc position "Constraining the Multiplicity of Supernovae Progenitors through Interferometric Observations"

The MULTIPLES project

Throughout the Universe, the dynamics and chemical evolution of spiral galaxies like our Milky Way are largely controlled by the lives and deaths of stars with masses many times that of the Sun. The evolution of these massive stars, in turn, is highly regulated by their multiplicity and by the mass and angular momentum exchanged through binary interaction, and by the huge amounts of mass expelled from their surfaces by means of powerful starlight-driven wind outflows. These fundamental properties critically determine how these massive stars live and die and control the nature and properties of the compact remnants – neutron stars and black holes – that are left behind. In this context, the MULTIPLES project aims at constraining the multiplicity properties of massive stars across their entire life cycle, as well as to investigate the origin of close massive binaries and to characterize the nature and frequency of post-interaction products in populations of massive stars.

The position

Through an ERC-CoG, the KU Leuven Institute of Astrophysics is advertising a postdoc position. The selected candidate will join the MULTIPLES / MASSIVE STAR team (6 PhDs, 3 PDs) under the supervision of Prof. Hugues Sana and will work as part of an international network of collaborators. The advertised position covers the following topic: "High-angular resolution observations of massive stars". In this project, the selected applicant will use new and archival data to investigate the multiplicity properties of different class of massive stars in the Milky Way using high-angular resolution techniques with an emphasis on optical long-baseline interferometry. The candidate will investigate the impact and significance of multiplicity on the formation and evolution of massive stars, as well as the role and frequency of triples and higher order multiple systems. The observational constraints will be compared to those obtained at other mass ranges, metallicities and evolutionary stages to investigate the evolutionary connections between different populations of massive stars and their contributions to core-collapse supernovae, gamma-ray burst and gravitational waves progenitors.

The Host Institute

The Institute of Astronomy of KU Leuven in Belgium is a vibrant research group of some 65 scientists, engineers, and administrative staff (fys.kuleuven.be/ster), including 6 full-time and 3 part-time professors. The institute is an expertise centre in stellar physics and active in several international consortia and collaborations, involving telescopes at observatories worldwide and in space. Members of the institute have access to high-performance computing facilities at KU Leuven. The IoA is responsible for the organisation of the 2-year Master in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Faculty of Science and operates the 1.2m Mercator telescope at La Palma Observatory, Canary Islands. The institute has a long tradition in instrumental, observational, and theoretical studies of stellar evolution. The successful candidate will enter a young and motivated group studying binary evolution. Regularly, each member of the group present his recent advances as well as comments on a recent publication in the field of interest.

The Contract

The selected postdoc will be offered a 1(+2)-year contract, with the additional 2-years being awarded after positive evaluation. The salary will be commensurate to the standard scale for postdoctoral researchers in Belgium and will depend on the number of years of experience after the PhD. It includes social and medical insurance as well as pension rights. The foreseen starting date shall be between October 1st 2019 and January 1st 2020, but can be negotiated. The postdoc will be encouraged to take up training in science and people management, science communication and grant application writing with the aim to develop a personal independent career track.

Requirements and Instructions to Apply

Post-doc applicants must hold a PhD in astrophysics or an equivalent diploma. The ideal candidates will have a strong observational and data analysis background, including expertise relevant for interferometric analysis of massive stars. Prior experience with other high-angular resolution techniques, other observational wavelength domain (UV, optical, IR and/or sub-mm observations and facilities such as the HST, ESO/VLT, ALMA and JWST, or similar facilities), or relevant modelling or theoretical background will be viewed positively by the selection committee. Proficiency in English is required.

The application package should be sent as one single PDF containing

• (i) a curriculum vitae with a publication list;
• (ii) a statement of interest (max. one page);
• (iii) a summary of research experience (max. 3 pages);
• (iv) names and contact details of 2 experts who are prepared to send confidential recommendation letters should they be requested to do so. The selection committee will send out requests for such letters for those applicants on the short-list after an initial ranking. The short-listed applicants will be invited for an interview (live or via skype).

The application material should be sent by e-mail to Clio.Gielen@kuleuven.be with subject “PD-MULTIPLES-applicantname” latest by May 2nd 2019.

Applications that do not strictly follow these guidelines will not be considered.

Prestigious Postdoctoral positions of the Research Fund Flanders (FWO)

FWO Junior and Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship

Postdocs in astrophysics have the opportunity to apply for a 3-year Junior or Senior Postdoctoral Fellowships at the Fund for Scientific Research of Flanders on the basis of a well-defined research proposal. The staff members of the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Leuven are willing to support applications for such a research project if it fits into one of the institute's research themes. Candidates having obtained excellent results during their master and PhD studies are eligible for such a research position. Interested candidates should contact one of the staff members of the institute for the possibilities.

Please note that the application deadline is 1st December, decision of outcome June and start of the fellowship on 1st October or November. The next call opens September 2018.

More information can be found on:

• http://www.fwo.be/en/fellowships-funding/postdoctoral-fellowships/junior-postdoctoral-fellowship/
• http://www.fwo.be/en/fellowships-funding/postdoctoral-fellowships/senior-postdoctoral-fellowship/