Internal Research Fellow (PostDoc) in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics

Our team and mission This research fellowship will be carried out in ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team (ACT): a group of research fellows (post-docs) and ESA graduate trainees who originate from a broad variety of academic fields and are aiming for an academic career. Its task is to monitor, perform and foster research on advanced space systems, innovative concepts and working methods. It interacts externally almost exclusively with academia and operates as a truly interdisciplinary team bound to high scientific standards. Through its research, the team acts as a pathfinder to explore novel, potentially promising areas for ESA and the space sector, ranging from applied to fundamental research topics. An important task of the team is to communicate scientific trends and results, as input to the strategic planning of the Agency.

The role You will carry out research in the field of computer science and applied mathematics. Areas of research are partly chosen by you based on expert judgment, insights into trends and developments, and partly chosen by the team to follow the strategic directions of the Agency. Potential areas include, but are not limited to: algorithmic engineering and high-performance computing; design and analysis of algorithms and data structures; discrete optimisation and operations research (e.g., integer linear programming and constraint programming); heuristics, meta-heuristics, and evolutionary computations; distributed and cloud computing; automated reasoning (e.g., formal and logic-based methods); non-standard computational models (e.g., quantum and bio-inspired computation); security and privacy (e.g., homomorphic encryption and anonymity); computational geometry, graph theory, and game theory.

Job requirements You should have recently completed, or be close to completion of a PhD in computer science, mathematics, or informatics, with the subject of your thesis being relevant t the description of the tasks outlined above and be aiming to embark on an academic/research career. Preference will be given to applications submitted by candidates within five years of receiving their PhD.

Benefits The position of Research Fellow at ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) is similar to a regular academic Post-Doc placement, however with a few notable key differences: ACT RFs have no teaching obligations. Nonetheless, they will likely be involved in the mentoring of ESA Graduate Trainees and stagiaires (student interns) within the team. As the team does not have a professor-like position, ACT RFs are academically more independent than most post-docs. This implies more freedom but also more responsibility for their research directions and approaches. ACT RFs join a diverse, changing and interdisciplinary research team embedded in a large space agency, in contrast to a more specialised, focused research group with close or similar competences. ACT RFs need to actively reach out to other disciplines, to bring in their competences to interdisciplinary research projects and to encourage other researchers to join them in their core research projects (research at the intersections of disciplines).

Applications details In addition to your CV and your motivation letter, please prepare a research proposal of no more than 5 pages. This proposal should be uploaded to the 'additional documents' field of the 'application information' section.