Free Scholarship Info

PhD Studentship
Synthesized Music for Room Acoustic Measurement - Architectural Acoustics and Music Technology
Acoustics Research Centre

School of Computing, Science and Engineering

Expected start date: As soon as possible after sated closing date

Applications are invited for a three-year PhD studentship funded by the Leverhulme Trust to research into the use of synthesized music as probe stimuli to determine parameters of acoustically critical spaces such as concert halls, cinemas, lecture theatres, recording studios and listening rooms.

When measuring room acoustics with traditional methods, loud and unpleasant test signals are inevitably used in most cases to maintain sufficient signal to noise ratios. These noisy probe stimuli are intolerable to audience, and consequently, in-situ, occupied measurements of rooms are rarely carried out. This hinders our understanding of the acoustic properties of a space when it is in a realistic in-use situation. The project will develop a new method that employs purposely synthesized music to replace the noisy test signals to enable occupied measurements. The synthesized signals will have to satisfy musical aesthetic requirements, as well as a scientific need of being suitable for the measurement: - a paradigm where science and art meet. Signal processing algorithms will be developed to resolve impulse responses from the received new music. The method will advance acoustic measurement techniques and enable better understanding of architectural
acoustics.

Suitable candidates will have or expect to obtain a good Bachelor’s (a minimum of a 2.1 Honours Degree), or preferably a Master’s Degree in a suitable area (e.g. acoustics, physical science, engineering or music technology, computer composition) , and be able to demonstrate competent problem solving and analytical abilities. A keen interest in this particular area of the research is essential. Competence in audio signal processing, programming and knowledge of music theory/computer music composition (e.g. ability of score reading, A level music, ABRSM grade 5+) would be a significant advantage.

The studentship is open to EU candidates and includes a tax-free stipend (identical

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PhD position Treatment of nanofiltration (NF) concentrates
Enschede, 7500 AE, (Overijssel) , 38 hours per week University of Twente

Job description
“Treatment of nanofiltration (NF) concentrates, produced during polishing of municipal wastewater treatment plant effluent”

Nanofiltration (NF) of the effluent of municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is a promising technique as it results in a permeate that can be used as a source for (industrial) process water, irrigation water or even for the production of drinking water. A major bottleneck is the NF concentrate that somehow needs to be disposed of, which accounts for the majority of the costs. However, NF concentrates also presents some interesting opportunities because several compounds are present at enhanced concentrations such as phosphorus, heavy metals, multivalent cations and organic micropollutants. This may allow (1) then recovery of phosphorus for direct reuse as a fertilizer, or for the production of higher grade phosphorus products, (2) easier removal of the concentrated heavy metals, (3) recirculation of multivalent cations to the biological reactor stimulating flocculation of the sludge and (4) an improved and/or easier removal of the organic
micropollutants. Research aspects that need to be addressed include the development of an innovative WWTP flow scheme based on NF polishing and NF concentrate treatment, technology selection for removal of heavy metals and organic micropollutants, and the effect of NF concentrate recirculation on the primary functions of the WWTP, i.e. flocculation, COD removal and nitrogen removal.

This project will be carried out in close collaboration with the TTIW Wetsus, centre of excellence for sustainable water technology, in Leeuwarden (www.wetsus. nl) in the research theme ‘Waste Water Technology’. The PhD student will be located at Wetsus, and supervised by staff members of the University of Twente, Wageningen University and Wetsus.

Requirements
University Graduate
Profile
We are looking for highly motivated and enthusiastic researchers with an MSc degree in chemistry, chemical engineering, material science or a related topic, with adequate experimental and theoretical skills. We prefer candidates with a good team spirit, who like to work in an internationally oriented environment. Fluency in English is a requirement. An interview and a scientific presentation will be part of the selection procedure.

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Postdoc Biochemistry (1.0)
(Utrecht), 38 hours per week Utrecht University

Job description
Postdoc Biochemistry
Because pathogens become increasingly resistant to therapeutic drugs, and due to the emergence of new pathogens, novel approaches to the treatment of infectious diseases are required. By chemical cross-linking we have generated bifunctional proteins consisting of a lectin domain and a fragment of an antibody directed against Fc receptors on phagocytic cells. Studies in vitro in our laboratory have shown that such bifunctional proteins can stimulate uptake and killing of a broad spectrum of pathogens by recognizing the microbes through the lectin domain and targeting them to the phagocytes through the anti-Fc receptor part. Your task will be to expand this work by:

1) varying the anti-Fc receptor moiety
2) developing a method for the production of the bifunctional proteins as fusion proteins
3) testing the effectiveness of the produced proteins with regard to their stimulation of pathogen uptake and killing by phagocytes in experiments in vitro. Depending on your affinity and experience, the effectiveness can also be studied in mouse infection experiments in vivo.

Requirements
Doctorate
We are looking for a biochemist, or medical molecular biologist, holding a PhD degree, who has experience with molecular biology, protein expression, various protein purification techniques and cell culture, and who has affinity with immunology. Candidates from the European Union are eligible for this position. Applications from the American continent will also be considered.

Organization
Utrecht University
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine www.vet.uu.nl is an internationally leading institute in veterinary scientific education, research and associated patient care. It ranks number one in Europe and among the top five institutes of veterinary science world-wide and is accredited by the American Medical Veterinary Association and the Canadian Medical Veterinary Association.

The Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology invites applications for a

Postdoc Biochemistry

Conditions of employment
Estimated maximum salary per month: eur 3500 - 4000
Salaryscale 10.
Maximum salary amount in Euro’s a month 3755
Employment basis: Temporary for specified period
Duration of the contract: 2 years
Maximum hours per week: 38

Additional conditions of employment:
We offer an experienced, collaborative and international group of colleagues and an excellent infrastructure that integrates molecular biology, biochemistry, life-cell imaging, and a state of the arts lipidomics facility. We take part in the Institute of Biomembranes www.biomembranes. nl the Academic Biomedical Centre www.abc.uu.nl and are engaged in many (inter)national collaborations.
We offer a fulltime temp. app. for 2 years.
Your gross salary will amount between € 2,861.- and € 3,755,- per month (full-time appointment in scale 10 of the Collective Labour Agreement of the Dutch Univ.), depending on previous qualifications and experience. Salaries are supplemented with a holiday bonus of 8% and a year-end bonus of 8,3% per year. There are outstanding secondary benefits, based on the CAO of NL Univ. and include e.g. a min. of 29 days holiday per year, an arrangement for study fac., generous contributions to healthcare, childcare, a pension scheme and flexible employment conditions.

Additional Information
Additional information about the vacancy can be obtained from:

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Project: CONNECT-IP: Emergent Connectors for Eternal Software
Intensive Networked Systems.
Oxford University Computing Laboratory

The Computing Laboratory has two vacancies on an EU-funded FP7
research project CONNECT-IP which runs for three and a half years from
1 February 2009 (subject to contract). The project is centred on a
revolutionary concept of a seamless networking infrastructure for
digital systems that enables continuous composition of networked
systems and the evolution of their functionalities. This will be
achieved through the application of formal reasoning, learning, and
run-time synthesis of connectors. The overall aim is to develop the
architectural principles and the foundations for modelling and
reasoning about networked systems.

This exciting project will provide the successful candidates with the
opportunity to interact with members of the partner sites in France,
Germany, Sweden, Italy, China and the UK. The Oxford component is led
by Professor Marta Kwiatkowska and the contribution will focus on the
formal foundations for connectors and automated verification of
non-functional requirements such as performability and dependability.
Two posts are available, a Research Assistant and a Student
Researcher, both of whom will engage in research addressing the above
objectives under the supervision of Professor Kwiatkowska

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PhD and Postdoc research fellowship positions

Job Summary

PhD and Postdoc positions in an Initial Training Network (ITN) on
ultrafast control of quantum systems by strong laser fields
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Three-Year Post-Doctoral Fellowship Opportunity

DEADLINE: 1 DECEMBER 2008

Initiative on the Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy

SDEP

The Beckman Institute

and

School of Earth, Society and Environment

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Interaction between society and the Earth’s environment has reached unprecedented intensity and scale. Attempts to manage this interaction are involving the formulation of environmental policies, which have multiple objectives and far-reaching social consequences. The Initiative on “Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy” (SDEP) of the Beckman Institute and U. Illinois’ new School of Earth, Society and Environment (SESE) will be dedicated to the pursuit of socially and politically sound solutions to society’s mounting environmental dilemmas. The initiative will: 1) conduct research on the human dimensions of environmental change and policy; 2) serve as a forum for collaboration among social and natural science faculty within SESE and across the U. Illinois campus; and, in the long run, 3) link U. Illinois researchers with policy makers and policy-making processes in Illinois, across the US, and globally. The initiative’s aim is to apply rigorous social-science research to the making of just and sustainable environmental policy.

Most environmental policy initiatives are centered around natural-science research on the physical origins and implications of environmental problems and efforts to relate the resulting knowledge to policy formulation. However, many societal problems stemming from local and global environmental change-and from the policies being developed to mitigate and adapt to change-are beyond the scope of technical fixes, and ordinary legal or economic analyses. The SDEP initiative will emphasize social-science research on the 1) causes of environmental change, 2) causes of social problems related to the environment, and 3) on the making, implementation and effects of policy solutions on society and the environment. It will generate policy-relevant knowledge on how policy affects wealth, poverty and distributional equity; health and wellbeing; security and vulnerability; democracy and justice; and political sustainability.

In its first phase, SDEP will focus on two environmental themes-climate-society interactions and environment-democracy linkages. Both are already the focus of much research on the U. Illinois campus. As the initiative gathers momentum, it will broaden its scope to include research on human rights, justice and democracy in relation to water policy, energy policy, biofuels production, urbanization, forest carbon offsets, biodiversity conservation, extractive industries, and international trade policies.

Faculty, post-doctoral and doctoral fellows will have access to a wide variety of resources on the U. Illinois campus. Within SESE the initiative will collaborate with the Center for Water as a Complex Environmental System. At the campus level it will coordinate activities with the Sustainable Energy and the Environment Initiative. The initiative will also seek collaborations with the Cline Center for Democracy, the Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society, the Center for Business and Public Policy, and the area studies centers. The initiative will also encourage collaborations with the excellent natural-science and engineering research at U. Illinois and elsewhere focused on environmental processes and environmental problem-solving. Drawing on the interdisciplinary research strengths of the Beckman Institute, the initiative aims to establish a truly interdisciplinary approach to sustainability founded on an integration of the natural and social sciences, and engineering.

The initiative will be structured around 1) thematic seminars series featuring U. Illinois faculty and other renowned researchers and active policy makers; 2) a working-paper series, 3) graduate and faculty fellows from the U. Illinois campus; 4) occasional theme-related post-doctoral fellows; 5) periodic workshops or symposia emerging from research at the initiative; and 6) faculty-led (externally funded) research initiatives. A pedagogical function of the initiative will be to expose students and faculty to the analysis of social causes of environmental change and research on environmental policy making and implementation.

Post-doctoral appointments are for three years. The post doctoral fellowship application deadline is 1 December 2008. Please note that all materials-including letters of recommendation are due on or before 1 December 2008.

Please carefully follow the application instructions on the Beckman Institute web page: http://www.beckman.illinois.edu/fellows/postdoc.aspx.

Funding

Funding for Beckman Institute Fellows consists of an initial stipend amounting to $52,000 annually. In addition, each three-year fellowship is awarded $25,000, plus a health insurance.

For more information also see:

The Beckman Institute

http://www.beckman.illinois.edu

School of Earth, Society and Environment

http://www.earth.uiuc.edu

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

http://illinois.edu

Department of Geography

http://www.geog.uiuc.edu/department

SDEP Director

Jesse C. Ribot

Department of Geography

University of Illinois

Dear All,
There is one grant for non Spanish citizens to make their PhD in the
IFIC ANTARES group. The conditions (in Spanish) can be seen here
.
The deadline for applications is January 11th. If you are interested or
you know somebody who might be interested, please let me know.
Best Regards,
Juanjo

PD.- A sumary of requirements and conditions:
Applicants can be those people who have a grade in Physics by a non
Spanish institution of higher education that enables them to access to
Master studies either in the European Space for Higher Education or
other systems.
The candidate should have finished her/his studies after 1st January 2007.
The candidate should be able to demonstrate a knowledge of Spanish or
English good enough to carry out the proposed research tasks.

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website link:
https://webster. ugent.be/ vacatures/ AAPWP/EMPHD. html

Vacancies

Fully paid 4 years Ph.D. positions within the Electromagnetics Group

At present several fully paid 4 years Ph.D. positions are available
within the Electromagnetics Group of the Dept. of Information
Technology. Apart from a Master’s degree in Electrical or Physical
Engineering and good knowledge of English, basic (graduate) knowledge
in Electromagnetics and high-frequency electronics is sufficient. The
Ph.D. candidate will be provided with all guidance and hardware and
software tools necessary to perform state-of-the art research in one
of the following fields:
·High-frequency behavior of Integrated Circuits (ICs) with a special
focus on ICs for the automotive industry. This research will be
conducted in cooperation with Flemish industry partners, such as
Melexis and ON Semiconductor, and also within a consortium of
well-known European electronics manufacturers, such as Philips, NXP,
Bosch, Infineon, …
·Flexible and implantable antennas (in cooperation with Recticel and
Flanders’ Drive)
·Design and modeling of advanced submicron interconnect technologies
of ICs (in cooperation with Agilent Technologies)
·Advanced time-domain (FDTD) and finite element (FE) techniques for
the simulation of antennas for usage within the ADS-framework of
Agilent Technologies
·Detection of concealed objects with millimeter waves (within a
Strategic Basic Research project of the IWT) and early detection of
breast tumors
·Fast Maxwell solvers for very large and complex structures in
cooperation with foreign research groups in the USA, Finland, Italy,
Turkey, and Israel.

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