Location: National Oceanography Centre Southampton Salary: £34,980 to £38,205 per annum Full Time Fixed Term until 30/09/2025 Closing Date: Thursday 14 March 2024 Interview Date: To be confirmed Reference: 2420423HN-1R
Applications are invited from researchers to work as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the University of Southampton's World-leading Geochemistry Research Group (https: // www. southampton.ac.uk/research/groups/geochemistry). In the School of Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton you will join a community of >500 researchers and support staff drawn from physics, chemistry, biology, geoscience and engineering, with a strong focus on marine biology and the marine environment, to work on a project at the interface between the electrochemistry, geochemistry, marine biology, and engineering.
This post is funded through a grant entitled “CoralChem – The mechanics of coral calcification revealed by a novel electrochemical toolkit” funded by the BBSRC. The line management will be shared between Prof Gavin Foster (https: // www. southampton.ac.uk/oes/about/staff/glf1u08.page), Dr Guy Denuault (https: // www. southampton.ac.uk/people/5wyh7m/doctor-guy-denuault) and Prof Peter Smith (https: // www. southampton.ac.uk/people/5x8c6f/professor- peter-smith).
Stony corals, and the vibrant coral reefs they support, are under threat from a multitude of anthropogenic stressors from ocean warming and ocean acidification to pollution and over-fishing. The calcium carbonate skeleton of stony corals is constructed within a micro-sized extracellular space sandwiched between the animal tissue and the existing skeleton. To go beyond our current empirical understanding and to better predict the fate of these important ecosystem engineers requires a mechanistic understanding of the biomineralization process. This is however currently lacking due to the difficulty of reliably and accurately determining the carbonate chemistry (i.e. the pH) of the space where skeleton construction occurs.
We will overcome this challenge here by i) developing a durable solid state dual O2/pH sensor, and ii) addressing the fundamental issue of positional feedback to maintain a constant position of a sensor inserted within the calcifying space of a mobile living organism, ensuring that the sensor is not destroyed during measurement through collision with the hard skeleton.
A successful candidate should have:
For further information about related work at Southampton follow these links:
https: // www. southampton.ac.uk/oes/research/groups/geochemistry.page
www. thefosterlab.org
https:// www. thefosterlab.org/microns2reefs
For further enquiries please contact Professor Gavin Foster ([email protected] )
Applications for Research Fellow positions will be considered from candidates who are working towards or nearing completion of a relevant PhD qualification. The title of Research Fellow will be applied upon successful completion of the PhD. Prior to the qualification being awarded the title of Senior Research Assistant will be given.
Apply Online
Further details:Apply by midnight on the closing date. For assistance contact Recruitment on +44(0)2380 592750 or [email protected] quoting the job number.
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