The ICCUB, Unit of Excellence María de Maeztu, was awarded this recognition for the second time by the Spanish Government in 2020, as a center with a highly competitive strategic research programme in the frontiers of knowledge. Thanks to this recognition, we have the opportunity to offer a PhD grant funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ESF Investing in your future”:

- Structure and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy through Gaia, Reference CEX2019-000918-M-21-1

Context:

The topic of the PhD will be selected in the following context based on the skills and interests of the candidate.

The vast improvement in astrometric accuracy for nearly 2 billion stars achieved by the Gaia mission is revolutionizing the studies of the Milky Way (MW) and their relation to galaxy evolution and cosmology. Gaia's third data release (in 2020 and 2022) reduces astrometric and photometric uncertainties, will extend the radial velocity survey and will add new products like astrophysical parameters and spectral energy distribution of the sources. The goal of the Gaia team at the ICCUB is to move beyond the local description of the MW into a description and understanding of observed structures in their cosmological framework using data from Gaia and other surveys (Gaia-ESO, WEAVE, 4MOST, OCCASO, MIRADAS and JPLUS/JPAS among others).

Topics covered by our team are:

• Structure and history of the MW, stellar initial mass function and star formation history of its disc
• Star-forming regions, formation and evolution of stellar clusters
• Globular clusters (GCs)
• MW disc structure and evolution, chemical evolution and radial migration in the disc, Galactic potential, spiral arms & bar, perturbations by external galaxies
• Substructure in the phase space of the Galaxy, halo substructures, disk streams
• Binary systems

The ICCUB is uniquely positioned for the Gaia science exploitation because of 1) our participation in the Gaia mission since its beginning, 2) our local expertise on stellar dynamics theory, 3) our leadership in building the Gaia archive with its associated comprehensive repository and Data Mining systems, and 4) our expertise in star formation modelling and GCs science. Moreover, the ICC-Technological Unit (ICC-UT) is developing tools for data mining, distributed computing and big data to better exploit the Gaia archive, and a platform for joint use of Gaia and other survey data for an optimal scientific use by international collaborations.

Requirements:

• Who can apply?

Applicants may be all those who are enrolled or admitted to a doctoral program at the University of Barcelona for the 2021/2022 academic year, at the time of the application submission. Applicants may also be all those people who, even though at the time of the application submission are not enrolled or admitted to a doctoral program, they will be on the date the contract is formalized, in accordance with article 18.

Applications must be submitted online through this link of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación from October 28 until November 11, 2021 at 2:00PM CET. To request the present research project please use the following reference: CEX2019-000918-M-21-1.

Employment conditions:

• Which is the salary?

The minimum salary compensation that researchers in training must receive will be 16.640 euros gross per year for each of the first two years, 17.830 for the third year and 22.290 for the fourth year.

You will also get an additional funding of 6.860€ that you will be able to spend on tuition or research visits, for example. More information, at the article 7.

• What is the duration of the contract?

A maximum of four years.

More information here

Contact: Carme Jordi (carme@fqa.ub.edu)

Lola Balaguer-Núñez (lbalaguer@fqa.ub.edu)

or any member of the team at https://icc.ub.edu/research/galaxy-structure-and-evolution