Post Doctoral Fellowship, ALMA Archival Research on Fragmentation in Star-Forming Cores

Project Title

ALMA Archival Research on Fragmentation in Star-Forming Cores

The Program

The NRC’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program offers PDFs access to unique world-class facilities and the opportunity to work alongside multi-disciplinary teams of expert researchers and technicians on projects of critical importance to Canada. PDFs will carry out research on innovative research projects, with opportunities for career development (publications and/or industry interaction).

PDFs will be offered appointments to the staff of the National Research Council on a term basis and will be offered salaries and benefits currently available to Research Officers. Salaries commensurate with experience are taxable and subject to other deductions. As a guide, the current annual PhD recruiting rate is $83,985. In addition, PDFs will be allocated a travel fund to support their work.

The Role

ALMA’s exquisite angular resolution and sensitivity have opened the door to studying fragmentation within dense star-forming cores in our Galaxy.  The few existing analyses of such fragments alongside the incidence rates expected by simulations have provided conflicting results.  Large samples of detections are necessary, and a wealth of publicly available data exists in ALMA’s archive waiting to be examined.  The successful applicant will harness the computing resources available in the CANFAR Science Platform to process archival ALMA continuum and line emission data of dense cores in nearby molecular clouds to identify, analyze the properties of core fragments, and compare them with those predicted by numerical simulations.  With this project, the successful applicant will help to develop ‘big data’ capabilities for the CANFAR Science Platform, as it prepares to become a major computing hub as Canada’s SKA Regional Centre.

Active areas of research at NRC Herzberg include star formation, the interstellar medium, Solar System objects, exoplanets and circumstellar disks, magnetic fields, the Milky Way and Local Group, near-field cosmology and resolved stellar populations, galaxy evolution, supermassive black holes and high redshift galaxies. The Canadian Astronomical Data Centre at NRC Herzberg is involved in many areas including operating a multi-wavelength telescope archive and supporting the cloud-based computing services offered on the CANFAR Science Platform. Current and future ground- and space-based facilities from the UV to radio are represented in our instrument development, which includes radio correlators and signal processing, radio receivers, antenna design, adaptive optics, and UV/optical/near-IR instrumentation. 

 NRC-Herzberg has a rare combination of staff involved in astronomy research, instrumentation design and development, engineering, data science and observatory support. Our fellowships are intended to leverage this environment to help mentor researchers who will become the leaders necessary to enable ambitious cutting edge astronomy research in the coming decades. We are committed to ensuring that all staff members promptly receive the accommodation they need to do their job and we understand the importance of work/life balance.