postdoctoral researcher

The position would best suit a talented, motivated, and curious early career researcher with a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry or Physics and experience in theoretical research of atmospherically related compounds in a complex environment. Some or all of the following skills and experience would be an advantage: experience in using classical molecular dynamics, Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics, path-integral dynamics, and/or development of machine-learned interatomic potentials; experience with coding and scripting for data analysis; ability to communicate complex information clearly and accurately in English, both in written and oral forms; ability to work independently and as part of a team.

A postdoctoral research position in computational and theoretical photochemistry is available in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol, supported by the ERC Consolidator Grant 101229789 In Silico Photochemistry of Atmospheric Molecules in Aqueous Aerosols (ISPAMIA). The project is led by Prof Basile Curchod (University of Bristol, UK).

This project will investigate the photochemistry of atmospheric volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in and at the surface of aqueous aerosols. The project will comprise (1) theoretical developments to describe the complex environment created by an aqueous aerosol, from an electronic structure and nuclear dynamics perspective, and (2) the application of these methods to simulate the unimolecular and bimolecular photochemistry of selected VOCs in and at the surface of an aqueous aerosol. This project builds on recent works by our research group on studying the gas-phase photochemistry of atmospheric and complex molecules.

The present postdoctoral position will focus on the study of the interaction of selected VOCs with different models of the air-water interface of an aqueous droplet, using machine-learned potentials to accelerate the sampling of ground-state distributions representative of the VOC in different environments.

Further details of the In Silico Photochemistry Group can be found at www.in-silico-photochem.com, where a list of the group's publication can be found as well.