PhD position in Marine Palynology (4 years)

Utrecht University has great ambitions for its teaching quality and study success rates. This also applies to its clear research profiles which are centred around four themes: Dynamics of Youth, Institutions, Life Sciences and Sustainability. Utrecht University plays a prominent role in our society and contributes to finding the answers to topical and future societal issues.

UU wishes to be a home for everyone. We value staff with diverse backgrounds, perspectives and identities, including cultural, religious or ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age. We strive to create a safe and inclusive environment in which everyone can flourish and contribute.

The Utrecht Department of Earth Sciences is looking for a highly motivated and versatile PhD candidate with a MSc background in Earth Sciences, Environmental sciences, Biology, Climate physics, Oceanography or other appropriate fields. You will work on the project “Change in the subantarctic ocean during past strong deglaciations induced by icebergs”.

The subantarctic ocean is one of the three main sinks of atmospheric carbon, and as such it acts as a profound mitigation mechanism of antropogenically induced climate change. This ocean zone faces strong oceanographic changes over the past decade -warming, stratification and freshening- all of which impact the carbon sink efficiency. Questions arise regarding the long-term role of the subantarctic carbon sink as negative climate feedback. In this project, you will combine proxy-based oceanographic reconstructions in the subantarctic zone with numerical lagrangian model simulations of iceberg melt to investigate how iceberg discharge affected the subantarctic zone as carbon sink in the past. In the first half of the project, you will generate dinoflagellate cyst, bulk carbonate geochemistry and biomarker records that document in high resolution the oceanographic changes in two existing sediment cores. In the latter half of the project, you will create lagrangian iceberg tracking simulations with the goal to quantify and map freshwater input from iceberg discharge during deglaciation phases. The ultimate goal is to infer paleoceanographic changes in the subantarctic zone during past deglaciation phases.

A personalised training programme will be set up, reflecting your training needs and career objectives. About 20% of your time will be dedicated to this training component, which includes following workshops and/or courses, as well as training on the job in assisting in the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes of the department at Utrecht University.

The position is part of a Dutch National consortium centre called EMBRACER, with the aim to investigate feedbacks within carbon and water cycles in the climate system. EMBRACER includes 23 PIS from 6 institutions and with a wide variety of disciplines, from physics, environmental, earth and social sciences. The EMBRACER community of students and staff will have regular cross-disciplinary meetings, events and lots of opportunities to get in contact with the wide spectrum of climate science. (See also about the organisation.)

Qualifications:

We welcome a motivated team-player who recognizes themselves in the following description:

The project requires generating numerical simulations and proxy data. You must have completed your MSc degree in Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Biology, Climate Physics, Oceanography or a related discipline by the time the position starts. In terms of skills we require:

• Experience or strong interest in paleoclimate/paleoceanography;
• Skills in micropaleontology or affinity with microscope work;
• Experience in working in a laboratory;
• Experience with coding and programming in Python;
• Demonstrated writing skills;
• Versatility and flexibility, keenness to learn new techniques and skillsets;
• Capability to independently plan and organize your work, with interest in taking a leading role in its direction;
• Adequate social/verbal/communication skills.

Due to the international character of our research, good command of spoken and written English is essential. We highly encourage applicants from all members of our community and of diverse backgrounds to join us.

Terms of employment:

You will be offered a full-time PhD position, initially for one year with extension to four years in total upon a successful assessment in the first year, and with the specific intent that it results in a doctorate within this period. The gross monthly salary starts with € 2,901 in the first year and increases to € 3,707 in the fourth year of employment with a full-time appointment. Salaries are supplemented with a holiday bonus of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8,3% per year. A pension scheme, partially paid parental leave, and flexible employment conditions are based on the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities.

In addition to the collective employment conditions, Utrecht University has a number of its own arrangements. These include agreements on professional development, leave arrangements, sports and cultural schemes, and you get discounts on software and other IT products. We also give you the opportunity to expand your terms of employment through the Employment Conditions Selection Model. This is how we encourage you to grow. For more information, please visit working at Utrecht University.

About the organisations:

Utrecht University’s Faculty of Geosciences studies the Earth: from the Earth’s core to its surface, including man’s spatial and material utilisation of the Earth – always with a focus on sustainability and innovation. With a population of 3,400 students (BSc and MSc) and 720 staff, the Faculty is a strong and challenging organisation. The Faculty is organised in four Departments: Earth Sciences, Physical Geography, Sustainable Development, and Human Geography & Spatial Planning.

The Department of Earth Sciences and the Department of Physical Geography conduct teaching and research across the full range of the solid Earth and environmental Earth sciences, with activities in almost all areas of geology, geochemistry, geophysics, biogeology and hydrogeology. The department hosts a highly international tenured staff. We house or have access to a wide variety of world-class laboratories, among which are UU’s Electron Microscopy Centre, the Geolab, and the Earth Simulation Lab. We also have excellent High- Performance Computing facilities and organise a warm welcome for every new member.

The position is embedded in the Marine Palynology & Paleoceanography group. The group focuses with four permanent staff members on paleoceanographic and paleo-environmental reconstructions in the entire Phanerozoic, specifically by looking at organic microfossils, usually in close collaboration with additional disciplines in the department and abroad.

About EMBRACER:

There is a close link between this project and the paleoclimate research within the virtual Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC), which focuses on tipping points within the climate system, and its successor, the Earth System Feedback Research Centre (EMBRACER), which will run at least until 2035. At EMBRACER, we work at the very frontiers of knowledge on climate change, Earth’s climate system and climate feedbacks (link in Dutch). EMBRACER brings together a wide range of world-leading climate experts with the aim to address existing uncertainties about climate feedbacks at the boundaries between oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere. It also brings together a large cohort of PhD students in a national highly interdisciplinary and strongly collaborative (paleo-)climate community. Our interdisciplinary approach and state-of-the-art infrastructure will bring us forward in our understanding of the impact of climate feedbacks emerging over the next decades to centuries.

About Utrecht:

Utrecht is the fourth largest city in the Netherlands with a population of nearly 360,000 and forms a hub in the middle of the country. Its historical city centre and its modern central station can easily be reached from our campus in Utrecht Science Park by public transport or by a 15-minute bicycle ride. Utrecht boasts beautiful canals with extraordinary wharf cellars housing cafés and terraces by the water, as well as a broad variety of shops and boutiques.

Additional information:

For informal questions (not applications), please contact Dr Peter K. Bijl (p.k.bijl@uu.nl) or Prof. Erik van Sebille (e.sebille@uu.nl).

How to apply: To apply, please use this link to go to the advertisement on UU’s own website and follow the guidelines mentioned there. We aim for a quick selection procedure after the deadline of March 14^th, 2025. The preferred starting date is Summer 2025 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Note that international candidates that need a visa/work permit for the Netherlands require at least four months processing time after selection and acceptance. This will be arranged with help of the International Service Desk (ISD) of our university. Finding appropriate housing in or near Utrecht is your own responsibility and, unfortunately, we must warn that it is a tight market at the moment. In case of general questions about working and living in The Netherlands, please consult the Dutch Mobility Portal.

Online screening may be part of the selection. Commercial response to this ad is not appreciated.