PhD position at CIEMAT: “Scientific Computing for Particle Physics at the High Luminosity LHC”
PhD position at CIEMAT:
“Scientific Computing for Particle Physics at the High Luminosity LHC”
The Particle Physics Unit at Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT-FP) announces the upcoming opening of a predoctoral position for outstanding young MSc graduates towards a PhD Thesis on Scientific Computing for the processing of massive amounts of Particle Physics data.
The experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN have recorded and analyzed billions of proton-proton collisions, leading to highlights of modern Science such as the discovery of the Higgs boson, pushing the frontiers of fundamental Physics. The CIEMAT-FP unit participates in the computational effort
operating two data centers of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG): the Spanish Tier-1 center at the Port d’Informació Científica (PIC) in Barcelona, and a Tier-2 center at the CIEMAT site in Madrid.
The High Luminosity LHC program (HL-LHC), planned to start in 2027, will generate unprecedented amounts of data, orders of magnitude higher than that collected up to now. This huge data sample will be scrutinized by physicists searching for answers to the currently unsolved questions of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Radically new solutions in Scientific Computing are required in order to help overcome this immense computational challenge and bridge the gap existing from the current WLCG capacities to the predicted demands of the HL-LHC era.
This project aims at pushing the frontiers of Particle Physics as a data-driven Science. Research lines include advanced technologies for data distribution and access (such as the federation of distributed storages via high-capacity content delivery networks), workflow management to efficiently exploit distributed processing facilities, and metadata analytics (involving Big Data techniques such as machine learning) to simulate and optimize the performance and costs of the future infrastructure in diverse scenarios in technology choices, as well as evolving experimental conditions.
The selected candidate will be based, upon agreement, either at PIC, a datacenter and computing research hub supporting diverse scientific disciplines located in Barcelona, or at the main CIEMAT Moncloa campus in Madrid.
The 4-year PhD contract (Personal Investigador Predoctoral en Formación or Formación de Personal Investigador-FPI) will be funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the “Programa Estatal de Promoción del Talento y su Empleabilidad en I+D+I” (FPI). This position is associated to the research project “Processing, simulation and data analysis at Tier-1 and Tier-2 centres for the LHC experiments, Phase VI”, reference number PID2019-110942RB-21. The official call has been published at http://www.ciencia.gob.es/portal/site/MICINN_predoc2020, also announced at http://cfp.ciemat.es/predoc. The deadline for applications is October 27th 2020.
The candidate must hold a Master’s Degree in Physics, Computer Science or similar by the time of the signing of the contract (July-September 2021), and a good command of English. Ideally, candidates would have strong motivation in fields such as particle physics, distributed computing and big data.
For further information, please contact: José María Hernández (Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.), Josep Flix (Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.), Antonio Delgado (Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.), or Antonio Pérez-Calero (Esta dirección de correo electrónico está siendo protegida contra los robots de spam. Necesita tener JavaScript habilitado para poder verlo.).
The CIEMAT Particle Physics Unit is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Eliminating gender inequalities by promoting equal opportunities for men and women is a core mission of our group and it is our commitment to establish the necessary actions to close the gender gap.
