Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Physics-Adapted Numerical Methods

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Physics-Adapted Numerical Methods

This is Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

With about 17,500 students, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences is one of the largest higher education institutions in Norway. A broad range of academic programmes are offered at Bachelor, Master and PhD levels, spread out on five campuses Førde, Sogndal, Bergen, Stord og Haugesund.
Our ambition is to build stronger and more solid academic and research environments that will interact nationally and internationally. The aim is to become a recognized actor on the international higher education arena. Increased international cooperation and engagement in externally funded projects will work towards this goal.

The Department of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences has a strong academic and research environment, offering programmes at bachelor’s, master’s and PhD levels. The department has around 1,100 students and more than 120 staff members, and plays a key role in advancing technologies for digitalisation and the green transition.

We offer education across our campuses in Førde, Bergen and Haugesund, with six study programmes in computer science and electrical engineering, and teaching contributions in mathematics, statistics and physics.

The department hosts active research groups in areas such as software engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer interaction and sensor networks, and collaborates closely with industry and public sector partners.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Physics-Adapted Numerical Methods

The Department of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, has a vacancy for a postdoctoral research fellow in numerical mathematics for a period of 3 years.
The postdoctoral position is part of the project “Physics-Adapted Numerical Methods for Two-Phase Flow” (PANum) funded by the Research Council of Norway.The project is a joint collaboration between Western Norway University of Applied Sciences and Hasselt University in Belgium.

In PANum the goal is to formulate and implement mathematical methods that are not only robust, efficient and have a low numerical error, but that also guarantee that important physical properties are fulfilled in the numerical solution. Ultimately, PANum will lead to a computational algorithm that reliably simulates two-phase flow.

The postdoctoral project will be part of developing and analyzing relevant numerical methods and implement them in an open-source framework that will be made openly available for others to use. This will be relevant for example for CO2 storage and design of fuel cells.

Research environment:

The PANum project is situated in the Engineering Computing research group at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, and in the computational mathematics group (CMAT) at Hasselt University. Both groups focus strongly on numerical analysis and mathematical modelling. The prospective postdoctoral researcher will work in close collaboration with Carina Bringedal and Erlend Storvik from Engineering Computing, Jochen Schütz from CMAT, as well as the current PhD and master students connected to the PANum project.

Postdoctoral research fellows receive an annual work expense funding which can be used for conference participation, research visits, and equipment. The place of employment is campus Bergen or campus Førde.

Applicants must have earned a PhD degree in computer science, simulation science, applied mathematics or in a closely related field, or have submitted the PhD thesis before the application deadline. The PhD must have been awarded within 6 weeks after the application deadline. The scientific profile of qualified candidates must be within numerical methods for ODEs and PDEs.

A solid background in both the following fields is required:

• Numerical analysis for ODEs and PDEs
• Scientific programming using Python, MATLAB, C++, Julia, or similar

Furthermore, experience within:

• collaborative code development and usage of version control tools like git
• asymptotic methods, like two-scale asymptotic expansions or matched asymptotic expansions, for PDEs

will be considered an advantage when candidates are ranked.

In addition to the required educational and scientific background, the following criteria will be evaluated:

• Quality and relevance of PhD thesis
• Quality and relevance of publications
• Ability to work in intersection of theoretical and applied research
• Ability to collaborate, lead the writing of research papers, ability to initiate and advance research, and research and scientific leadership potential
• Oral and written good communication skills