We are recruiting 50 doctoral and post-doctoral candidates (m/f)
to create new knowledge with us.

You want to investigate major challenges of our society? This requires the best career environment right from the beginning: outstanding education, inspiring science locations and exceptional equipment and infrastructure. The Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ offers exciting research topics, excellent supervision, solid structures, interdisciplinary team work and tailored qualification at the UFZ Graduate School HIGRADE – the best conditions to start a successful career.

Join us in addressing the most pressing societal and scientific challenges across ten large integrated projects (IP) in research areas like land use, biological diversity, water, soil, chemicals, health and energy. Find solutions to better understand and manage complex environmental systems together with more than 1,000 competent colleagues at the UFZ. Seek with us after a balance between social development and long-term protection of our livelihoods. Do research for the environment!

Interested?

You are an excellent graduate in natural, social or economic sciences? You are, e.g., biologist, hydrologist, engineer or economist with outstanding skills, knowledge and ideas? We invite you to submit an application to the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, the international centre of competence for environmental sciences and member of the largest scientific organisation in Germany, the Helmholtz Association. Come to Leipzig, Halle or Magdeburg, three modern and unique science locations with an appealing culture and flair. Deadline: 10 August 2012

Have a look at www.join.ufz.de to get an impression of the research and life environment at the UFZ locations.

Certainly one of our following offers will attract your attention!

IP No. 1: Mitigating of land use conflicts
4 PhD students (m/f) and 1 scientist / post-doc (m/f, 50%)

The general aim of the integrated project is the development of scenarios, indicators and optimization tools to quantify, to value and to safeguard ecosystem services and biodiversity in new cultural landscapes for future generations. Carrying out several local and regional case studies in mainly agricultural, urban-rural and protected regions we want to provide a scientific consistent concept for upscaling results to the national level.

IP No. 2: Emerging ecosystems: functional dynamics under global change
4 PhD students (m/f) and 1 post-doc (m/f, 50%)

Changes in land use and climate, invading species (including pathogens and their vectors) as well as chemical stressors alter environmental states into previously not encountered conditions. Using experiments, observation and modelling, we aim at identifying functional changes in ecosystems emerging under these novel conditions.

IP No. 3: Land use aspects of transforming the energy system
5 PhD students (m/f) and 1 post-doc (m/f, 50%)

This Integrated Project focuses on aspects of the (above- and below-ground) land use change driven by the politically fostered large-scale transition to decentralized renewable energy systems. In an interdisciplinary team of natural and social scientists, socio-economic and environmental impacts will be assessed and options for a sustainable implementation and effective governance will be developed.

IP No. 4: Urban transformations
2 scientists (m/f, 50%), 1 PhD student / scientist (m/f, 50%) and 1 scientist (m/f)

This IP provides research contributions on sustainable urban development focussing on resource efficiency, quality of life and resilience. The challenge is to ensure a fair distribution of resources with simultaneous consideration of needs to adapt to global change. This applies to both, growing and shrinking urban areas.

IP No. 5: Healthy aquatic ecosystems
4 PhD students (m/f)

An interdisciplinary team of scientists (ecologists, ecotoxicologists, social and legal scientists) develops innovative strategies to optimize the status and functions of inland water bodies exposed to multiple pressures.

IP No. 6: Water and solute fluxes in catchments
6 PhD students (m/f)

A quantitative understanding of solute fluxes in catchments is an important prerequisite for the management of solute exports from landscapes and the mitigation of adverse effects on the receiving waters. Within IP No. 6 new data and model driven concepts to better understand and quantify solute fluxes in catchments will be developed.

IP No. 7: Water scarcity – Water management in semi-arid regions
6 PhD students (m/f) and 1 scientist (m/f)

To secure water for living will be one of the most challenging global tasks of the 21st century. In this highly interdisciplinary project we will develop future water scenarios for semi-arid and arid regions by combining monitoring and modeling strategies of hydrological and hydro-geological processes with the development and implementation of new technologies for a better water use efficiency and a socio-economic and legal assessment of water resources management options.

IP No. 8: Exposome – Environmental pollution and its impacts on human health
6 PhD students (m/f)

There is evidence that environmental factors including life style contribute to complex diseases significantly more than genetic factors. The project goal is to identify causative links between perturbation-induced exposure in the body and adverse outcome pathways.

IP No. 9: Controlling chemicals’ fate
7 PhD students (m/f)

The project “Controlling chemicals’ fate” aims at evaluating and modeling the capacity of ecosystems to degrade chemicals with the goal to promote the eco-compatible design, the predictability of fate and the sustainable management of chemicals in ecosystems.

IP No. 10: From local observations to regional predictions
3 PhD students (m/f)

Land surface models describe the exchanges of energy, water and CO2 with the atmosphere. The integrated project “From local observations to regional predictions” examines how biodiversity and succession can be incorporated in the descriptions of land surface models. Hyperspectral imaging, ecosystem productivity and soil moisture measurements with cosmic ray sensors are currently installed in the TERENO observatories and will be used in the model development and for evaluation.