31 PhD Fellowships, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy (2019)

The Gran Sasso Science Institute offers 31 PhD fellowships in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Social Sciences and invites applications for 9 fellowships in “Astroparticle Physics”, 8 in “Mathematics in Natural, Social and Life Sciences”, 7 in “Computer Science” and 7 in “Urban Studies and Regional Science”. The official language for all PhD courses is English. The fellowships are awarded for 4 years and their yearly amount is € 16.159,91 gross.

All PhD students have free accommodation at the GSSI facilities and use of the canteen.

The application must be submitted through the online form available at www.gssi.it/phd/ by June 18, 2019 at 18.00 (Italian time zone).

Applications available for 9 fellowships in “Astroparticle Physics”, 8 in “Mathematics in Natural, Social and Life Sciences”, 7 in “Computer Science” and 7 in “Urban Studies and Regional Science”.

• Mathematics in Natural, Social and Life Sciences (8 fellowships)
Within the PhD course in Mathematics in Natural, Social and Life Sciences a priority has been established on mathematical modeling, both towards the traditional areas of application as Physics or Engineering and towards emerging issues in Biology and in Social Sciences. An emphasis will be given also to numerical methods, high-performance computing techniques, stochastic analysis and partial differential equation methods, in particular, those ones related to fluid dynamics and quantum physics. Numerical and stochastic methods for mathematical models in seismology will be of special interest.

- 6 scholarships available

- 2 scholarships available for the research project "GrowBot - Towards a new generation of plant-inspired growing artifacts". The positions are supported under the Grant Agreement n. 824074 (Call: FETPROACT-2018-2020) of the Horizon 2020 Framework Program. The project is directed by Prof. Pierangelo Marcati. The project will address the following issues: mathematical models for the growth and movement of climbing plants, their relationship with experimental data existing in the literature. Control problems originating from bio-inspired robotics. The main mathematical techniques are related to ordinary differential and partial differential equations, dynamical systems, control theory, numerical analysis, stochastic techniques and statistical mechanics.

• Computer Science (7 fellowships):

- 6 scholarships available

- 1 scholarship available for the research project “Design and implementation of efficient algorithms and data structures for the analysis of genomic data” financed by Dante Labs srl. The PhD student will help to develop scalable tools for genome informatics that can handle very large genomic databases, starting from recent advances involving the run-length compressed Burrows-Wheeler Transform.

The PhD program in Computer Science of the GSSI aims to provide students with the main results, theories, techniques and methodologies regarding algorithms, models, languages, software and services to cope successfully with the challenges of the present and future Information and Communication Technology.

• Astroparticle Physics (9 fellowships):

- 6 scholarships;

- 2 scholarships for the research project “Experimental galactic and directional signatures of Dark Matter candidates”. The positions are supported under the Grant Agreement n. 818744 (Call: ERC-2018-COG) “INITIUM – an Innovative Negative Ion Time projection chamber for Underground dark Matter searches” (CUP D16C19000160006) of the Horizon 2020 Framework Program. The student is expected to work on assembly, operation, calibration, data taking and data analysis of detector prototypes and experiments with directional sensitivity.

- 1 scholarship for the research project “Surface brightness fluctuations distances, cosmology and gravitational waves” co-financed by National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).

The research and PhD in physics at the GSSI is focused on astroparticle physics. Astroparticle physics is an interdisciplinary and young research field, grown at the intersection of particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics and cosmology. It addresses some of the most pressing and fundamental questions in science today: the origin and the evolution of our universe, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, the study of neutrinos and of the ultimate constituents of matter, the search for gravitational waves, the investigation and explanation of the cosmic rays.

• Urban Studies and Regional Science:
- 7 scholarships.
The aim of the PhD in Urban Studies and Regional Science is to address issues related to local and regional development. The methodological perspective of research and teaching is multidisciplinary, combining regional and urban economics, economic and human geography, spatial planning and sociology.

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31 PhD Fellowships, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy (2019)