1-2 Postdoctoral Researchers at the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA) and the Department of Physics and Astronomy on interacting supernovae

We are seeking 1-2 postdoctoral researchers to conduct research on interacting supernovae, in particular 2D/3D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations using high-performance computing (HPC) and comparison to observational data. The positions are fixed-term for two years and start immediately, preferably no later than 1 May 2026.

The University of Turku (UTU) is a world-class multidisciplinary research university which offers interesting challenges and a unique vantage point to national and international research and education. The Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA) is a national research institute in Finland, with its headquarters within the UTU campus. Turku is an affordable, pleasant city to live in, located in southwest Finland where the weather is temperate and transport connections are good via Helsinki, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. 

Our Stellar Explosions research group is actively pursuing various supernova/transients projects using mainly ESO facilities and the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT). UTU is consortium member in several instrumentation projects, such as Son of X-Shooter (SOXS) and the NOT Transient Explorer (NTE), with guaranteed future observing time. UTU is a co-owner of the NOT, a member of the Gravitational-Wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO), and two ESO Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) instrument consortia MICADO and MOSAIC.

The postdoctoral researcher(s) will be working at University of Turku (UTU) as part of a research project funded by the Research Council of Finland: "Radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of interacting supernovae", within a Finland-Japan special collaboration scheme with partners from Japan including University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Yamagata University, and National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The project aims to simulate time-evolving supernova-CSM interaction with varying physical parameters, and construct grids of photometry, spectroscopy, and polarimetry based on the radiative output, to be compared with actual observational data. Candidates with observational expertise are also encouraged to apply as the project requires working closely with observational data, with a component of new observations including those to be conducted using SOXS.

Our research group had recently started a pathfinder HPC project on interacting supernova simulations using the LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure) supercomputer, located in Kajaani, Finland, which is the flagship supercomputer of the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) and in the top 10 fastest supercomputers globally. One postdoctoral researcher is expected to use LUMI to follow up on this pathfinder project and expand the simulations both physically and computationally, by including wider supernova-CSM parameter sets, AI and machine learning techniques, and GPU programming. The simulation results will be compared to observational data obtained using facilities worldwide including ESO and NOT.