Luis W. Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellowship

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and the Computational Research Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory invite applications for the Luis W. Alvarez Fellowship in Computational Science. The fellowship allows recent graduates with a Ph.D. (or equivalent) to acquire further scientific training at one of the leading facilities for scientific computing and to develop professional maturity for independent research.

The scientific staff at Berkeley Lab recognizes the increasing significance of computational and computer science and the need to help educate students across the full spectrum of scientific computing. Today's computational science is rooted in the efforts of innovative scientists like Luis W. Alvarez. In the 1950s, physicist Dr. Alvarez opened a new era in high-energy physics research with his proposal to build a pressurized chamber filled with liquid hydrogen. Known as a bubble chamber, this device would allow scientists to discover new particles and analyze their behavior. In his 1955 prospectus for such an experimental facility, Dr. Alvarez became one of the first scientists to propose using computing devices for analyzing experimental data, even before such computers were actually available.

By the 1960s, Dr. Alvarez's vision was reality. His colleagues at Berkeley Lab used computers to track some 1.5 million particle physics events annually and developed scientific computing techniques which were adopted by researchers around the world. This effort led to Dr. Alvarez receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968.

Today, Berkeley Lab's Computing Sciences organization provides high-performance computing (HPC) resources and expertise to researchers across the country, advancing computational science of scale. Research areas in the Computational Research Division include:

* Developing and supporting robust and reliable bioinformatics tools
* Researching and developing software to support extreme-scale computing and data analysis in distributed environments
* Developing mathematical modeling tools for complex scientific problems
* Designing algorithms to improve the performance of scientific applications
* Researching system architectures to improve system performance
* Advancing peta-scale scientific data management
* Evaluating new and promising computing and networking technologies
* Researching methods to control and manage dynamic circuit networks
* Large scale visualization technologies


The Luis W. Alvarez Fellowship in Computational Science aims to achieve these goals by supporting recent graduates (within the past three years) with a strong emphasis on computing or computational science. The successful applicant will be compensated with a competitive salary and excellent benefits.

We encourage those who share Dr. Alvarez's scientific curiosity and dedication to join us in our efforts by applying for a fellowship.

Qualifications

Requires a Ph.D. in computer science or related discipline. Candidates must have received a Ph.D. within the last three years.

Notes

Applications are due by December 2, 2008 for Fall 2009.

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