Postdoctoral Fellow

The Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RSAA) at the Australian National University (ANU) operates Australia’s national optical observatory and has access to powerful national supercomputing facilities. Our staff and students have made major contributions to astronomy, mapping the structure and formation of the Milky Way, discovering planets orbiting other stars, measuring dark matter both within our Galaxy and in the wider Universe, and discovering the accelerating expansion of the Universe. Our astronomers include winners of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science and the Nobel Prize. We produce world-leading models and simulations of the interstellar medium, magnetised turbulence, and star formation. Our main campus is at Mount Stromlo Observatory.

The Postdoctoral Research Fellow will be based at RSAA, ANU, and undertake research in Professor Christoph Federrath’s research group on topics related to stellar and/or galactic/extragalactic astrophysics, with a particular focus on interstellar medium (ISM) physics, involving turbulence, magnetic fields, radiation, and star formation / stellar feedback physics. A key element of the work will be to develop, design, run, analyse, and publish high-resolution 3D magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of the ISM of galaxies, star formation in the present and/or early universe, including radiation modelling, and comparisons with observational data on the density, velocity, thermal, and/or magnetic field structure of the ISM. A key motivation for this work is to enhance our understanding the role of fundamental physical processes, such as turbulence, magnetic fields, radiation, and stellar feedback, for controlling the structure and dynamics of the ISM, the star formation rate and the initial mass function of stars in the Milky Way and in galaxies across cosmic time.

We are looking for an early career researcher with a PhD (at the time of appointment) in astronomy, with a strong track record of research in the field of astrophysical simulations and demonstrated ability to communicate and interact effectively with a variety of staff and students in a cross disciplinary academic environment.