About the Role
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The School of Physical Sciences is an enthusiastic and friendly group of Open University staff and students who carry out world-leading research and teaching in Astronomy, Physics, Physics Education, Planetary and Space Sciences, and Space Instrumentation.
The role
The School of Physical Sciences at the Open University, UK, invites applications for a 3 year fixed-term Postdoctoral Research Associate in Euclid spectroscopy and strong lensing / clumpy galaxies with Euclid and Rubin. The postdoctoral researcher will work with Professor Stephen Serjeant and Dr Hugh Dickinson on research funded Horizon Europe “ELSA” and “OSCARS" projects. The work will involve analysis and interpretation of imaging, photometry and spectroscopy collected by the Euclid space telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to investigate the dark matter content and/or baryonic substructure of galaxies and their halos.
Key Responsibilities
Euclid is an ESA space telescope launched in July 2023, designed to understand the nature of dark energy and dark matter. To achieve this, Euclid is observing over a third of the sky with high resolution imaging and spectroscopy, which will establish “the” reference map of the extra-galactic celestial sphere for decades to come. The ELSA project, Euclid Legacy Science Advanced analysis tools, aims to maximise the legacy science from the slitless spectroscopy of the ESA Euclid space telescope. This PDRA will take responsibility for extending deep learning models for object detection and segmentation in Euclid spectroscopic data. A small component of the project will be to implement an innovative programme of crowdsourced data mining with Euclid spectroscopic data.
This position is also part-funded by The Astronomy Dark Matter Test Science Project, one of the successful cascading grants from the Horizon-funded OSCARS open science project. This part of the project is aimed specifically at the Euclid-Rubin joint derived data products for strong gravitational lensing, in which Euclid and Rubin will be providing an avalanche of new lensing systems, increasing the discoveries by two orders of magnitude and transforming the field of strong gravitational lensing. The PDRA will extend the Euclid ELSA slitless spectroscopy work on reconstructing the data cubes, to the specific case of strong gravitational lensing, feeding in geometrical and physical constraints of galaxy-galaxy strong lensing. The PDRA will also generate Euclid+Rubin pansharpening tools using machine learning models, such as denoising autoencoders that we have already successfully deployed for far-infrared astronomy. The PDRA will also develop source/lens deblending tools again with the possibility of using machine learning, such as Generative Adversarial Networks that we have also deployed successfully in the context of JWST galaxy morphologies. Finally, part of the project will be to provide a brief review article for astronomers on the previous open science work in dark matter direct detection experiments.
For more details on ELSA, see https://elsa-euclid.github.io.
For more details on the OSCARS funded project, see https://www.oscars-project.eu/projects/astro-dm-tsp-astronomy-dark-matter-test-science-project
For informal enquiries, contact Stephen Serjeant at stephen.serjeant@open.ac.uk and/or Hugh Dickinson at hugh.dickinson@open.ac.uk
Skills and Experience
We are looking for someone with a PhD in astronomy, astrophysics or a related field and a strong (published) track record in research, with experience in working with and analysing data from large optical / near-infrared surveys. Experience with optical and near-infrared imaging and/or slitless spectroscopy would be advantageous. The project will involve Python programming, so experience in that will be essential; experience with machine learning algorithms will be an advantage. Finally, research experience in strong gravitational lensing and/or galaxy morphologies and/or data mining via citizen science would be advantageous. For more details, see the job description.
Essential Requirements
To apply for this role please submit the following;
• CV including a list of publications.
• Supporting statement, up to 1,000 words, you should set out in your statement why you’re interested in this role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required competencies for this role as detailed in the job and person specification.
Early closing date notification
We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.
