PhD Studentships in Computational Physics, the University of Basel, Switzerland

Two PhD positions will be available in 2009 in the computational physics group at the university of Basel in Switzerland (www.unibas.ch/comphys/comphys).

The computational physics group of Prof. Stefan Goedecker focuses on the development of new algorithms for atomistic simulations and their application to challenging problems. A wide variety of methods ranging from force fields over density functional schemes to quantum Monte Carlo methods is used in these investigations.

One project will be be done in collaboration with the experimental group of Prof. E. Meyer within the National Competence Center for Nanosciences. The aim is use innovative simulation methods to better understand atomic force microscopy experiments (see e.g. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 236106 (2008))

The other project is within a joint Swiss/Indian research program and aims at a better understanding of complex clusters using density functional methods (see e.g Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 055501 (2005))

Candidates for the two positions are not only expected to have a good physical/chemical understanding of condensed matter systems but also good mathematical and programming skills. Applicants who can not present high scores in the GRE exam (www.ets.org/gre) will have to pass an individual test in the area of computational physics. The usual application documents together with the name of two references should be send to: Stefan.Goedecker[ at ]unibas.ch