Postdoctoral Research Associate in Transient Astrophysics

Lancaster University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, together with the University of Southampton, the University of Oxford, and Queen’s University Belfast is seeking to appoint four Postdoctoral Research Associates, one at each institution, as part of the five-year STFC Large Award “TRANSCEND”.

The TRANSCEND collaboration will use Vera Rubin/LSST transient data and the 4MOST Time-Domain Extragalactic Survey (TiDES) to address pressing questions in modern astrophysics: how stars explode and drive chemical enrichment, how supermassive black holes grow, and the true nature of dark energy. Each Postdoctoral Research Associate will lead one of the following areas and also contribute to the broader science goals of the collaboration:

• Simulations and selection effects for SN Ia cosmology and beyond (Lancaster University): lead the forward-modelling of the combined LSST+TiDES sample, and characterise its associated sample selection effects. This project will include building galaxy population catalogues validated against state-of-the-art cosmological simulations (e.g. IllustrisTNG). This simulation effort will be the foundation underpinning every rate, host-galaxy and cosmological result in TRANSCEND.
• Host galaxies of transients (University of Southampton): derive host-galaxy properties from LSST+TiDES photometric and spectroscopic data, and use the unprecedented LSST+TiDES transient sample to study how transients correlate with their environments and measure rates of different classes of transient.
• SN Ia cosmology groundwork or rare transient follow-up and characterisation (University of Oxford): use over 30,000 spectroscopically confirmed SNe Ia and 150,000 host-galaxy redshifts to improve SNe Ia standardisation and lay the groundwork for using this sample in future SN cosmological measurements. Alternatively, focus on follow-up and modelling of rare transients.
• Transient physical properties and the black hole mass function of tidal disruption events (Queen’s University Belfast): measure key parameters such as luminosity and nickel masses for thousands of transients from TiDES and follow-up data to build population demographics, and use hundreds of live TDEs and thousands of host galaxies to derive scaling relations and occupation fractions for SMBHs.

All Postdoctoral Research Associate posts are full-time, funded for 5 years from 1st April 2027. This advertisement is for the Lancaster University post; apply separately to each university for the other three. Applicants are encouraged to apply for more than one post, and, once appointed, all four researchers will work closely, through regular collaboration visits, to maximise TRANSCEND’s scientific outcomes. State your order of preference (topic and institution) in each application.

If you have any queries regarding this position, please contact Mathew Smith at mat.smith@lancaster.ac.uk.