I’m really excited to welcome the third postdoc in my group! Today Guan-Wen Yuan (袁官文) joins my group as the second of the 2 DARKTRACK-funded postdocs (of the two, the astroparticle physicist), with the other being Marco Calzà. Guan-Wen did his PhD at the University of Science and Technology of China and at Purple Mountain Observatory under the supervision of Jin Chang, PI of the DAMPE experiment, and working on a bunch of very interesting things related but not limited to dark matter, BHs, and gravitational waves. And with the arrival of Guan-Wen our group is now complete. Now we just need to get lots of excellent science out. Welcome to Italy Guan-Wen!
Simony Santos da Costa joins our group!
We’re really happy to welcome Simony Santos da Costa as the second postdoc in our group! Simony will be here for the next two years on a prestigious Caritro Fellowship, and will be working with myself and Max Rinaldi on tests of inflation and dark sector physics through the latest cosmological data, while also developing an ambitious outreach program at MUSE. Simony was last a postdoc at INFN Pisa, where she held one of the prestigious INFN theory fellowships for foreigners (or Italians who have been abroad for long enough). Fun fact: Simony will be sharing an office with Marco Calzà, and they both speak Portuguese (and Italian)! Welcome to our group Simony, and I’m really looking forward to working on many exciting projects together!
Marco Calzà joins my group!
I’m really excited to welcome the first postdoc in my group! Today Marco Calzà joins my group as one of the 2 DARKTRACK-funded postdocs (of the two, the BH theorist). Marco did his PhD at the University of Coimbra under the supervision of João Rosa, working on a bunch of very interesting things BH-related, from superradiance to evaporation. His expertise and interests were simply a perfect fit for what I plan on doing within DARKTRACK, and I really look forward to working together. Welcome Marco (or, to be more precise, welcome back, since he was actually a BSc and MSc student here in Trento some years ago)!
Official openings for 2 DARKTRACK-funded postdoc positions
I am officially hiring! Applications are now welcome for 2 DARKTRACK-funded postdoc positions, for which I was previously gathering expressions of interest. Two positions are available, depending on whether or not the candidate holds a PhD at the time of the application:
* call 185/2023: lavoraconnoi.unitn.it/en/research-contracts/department-physics-call-selections-awarding-no-1-research-fellowship-decree-no-185-2023 (for candidates already holding a PhD)
* call 186/2023: lavoraconnoi.unitn.it/en/research-contracts/department-physics-call-selections-awarding-no-1-research-fellowship-decree-no-186-2023 (for candidates yet to obtain their PhD)
Please have a look at the INSPIRE job ad for further details, but make sure you submit all your application material to the above links, as we cannot consider material received via other channels. Please reach out to me if you have further questions about the project or the positions!
Expressions of interest for 2 DARKTRACK-funded postdoc positions
As mentioned earlier I am looking to hire 2 postdocs funded by my DARKTRACK project grant, focused on developing new ways to look for dark energy. There are a few bureaucratic steps I need to navigate before I can officially open the application process for these positions, but in the meantime I welcome expressions of interest from qualified and interested candidates. If you are interested, please send me an expression of interest following the indications provided in the INSPIRE job ad, with material to be sent to this AJO eDelivery link by November 23, 2023. As explained in the job ad, the cover letter is particularly important and will play a key role in my evaluation of the expressions of interest, so do pay particular attention to that. Do not hesitate to get in touch if you have further questions about the project or the positions!
DARKTRACK project funded!
Really excited to announce that I won the Internal Call for Research 2023 grant for which I applied in August! My project “Searching for Dark Energy off the beaten track” (acronym: DARKTRACK) was one among 5 projects selected throughout the University of Trento from ~150 applications, and I have been granted in total 135.200,00€. The goal of the project will be that of developing new ways to search for (screened) dark energy, and more generally look for non-gravitational interactions of dark energy. I will use the money to hire 2 postdocs for 2 years each (ideally an astroparticle physicist and a BH theorist), so if you are interested in joining my group stay tuned for updates on the application process. The group’s future is looking extremely bright, considering that we will also have another postdoc coming with a Caritro Fellowship, and I can’t wait to start working with all these bright young minds!
We got the Caritro Fellowship!
We (Max Rinaldi and I) received amazing news during the European Researchers’ Night - our application for the 2023 Caritro Postdoctoral Fellowship was successful, and our project was among the 9 selected in the whole of Trentino, across all fields! We were awarded 70.000€, and I’m super glad to announce that Simony Santos da Costa, currently a postdoc at INFN Pisa and whose application we supported as PIs, will therefore be joining our group in the coming months, for 2 years. The project we developed with Simony is entitled “Inflation and dark sector physics in light of next-generation cosmological surveys”, and consists of two parts: the scientific part is obviously targeting inflation, dark matter, and dark energy (especially in light of cosmological tensions and next-generation CMB and LSS data), whereas a second outreach part envisages a series of public lectures by Simony (who speaks Italian excellently!) at MUSE. One of the aims of the outreach part is of course to get the general public interested in science, but at the same time to raise awareness about the issue of gender (im)balance in physics, and hopefully encourage more young female students who are interested in physics to not be afraid to pursue their interests - in other words, we want Simony to be a role model for young women in physics at least in the Trentino region (let’s start small and see how things go). I’m really delighted at the prospect of having the first postdoc joining my group (though I’ll admit that, having been a postdoc myself until less than an year ago, it does feel somewhat strange), and I look forward to working with Simony, whose work I’ve been following for some time now!
Caritro Postdoctoral Fellowship
We’re hiring, or rather, trying to hire! The call for the 2023 Caritro Postdoctoral Fellowships is open, and the Theoretical Gravitation and Cosmology group led by Max Rinaldi and myself expects to be able to support at most one application. Caritro Fellowships are founded by the Caritro Foundation, and are meant to offer opportunities for professional growth to young researchers who have not turned 35 years old at the start date of the project, through support for research projects with a maximum duration of 24 months to be started in 2023, whose results are expected to benefit (broadly intended) the Province of Trento. We are looking for a young researcher below the age of 35, already in possession of a PhD, and with an excellent research track in cosmology and gravitation broadly intended, with a broad profile at the interface of theory and data, and experience in tests of fundamental physics from cosmological and astrophysical data. If you are interested, please send us an expression of interest following the indications provided in our INSPIRE job ad (with material preferably sent to this AJO eDelivery link - note that there are several stages of selection, please see towards the end of the INSPIRE job ad for more details): please get in touch if you are interested!
