PhD Student (f/m/d) Sampling Strategies for Surficial Geochemistry

With cutting-edge research in the fields of ENERGY, HEALTH and MATTER, around 1,500 employees from more than 70 nations at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) are committed to mastering the great challenges facing society today.

The position is at the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF). The institute develops, innovative technologies for the circular economy, including a more efficiently use and recycling of metal bearing raw materials. The position is related to a project that aims to develop a work-flow for exploration that, in addition to ground-breaking scientific methods, has a focus on environmental sustainability, social aspects and applications of the methods in other research areas, e.g. environmental analytics.

The Department of Modelling and Evaluation is looking for a PhD Student (f/m/d) Sampling Strategies for Surficial Geochemistry (subject to the final approval of project funding).

Your tasks

• Development of methods for establishing dynamic sampling strategies apt for usage with field analytical devices of low environmental impact
• Development of sampling strategies for surficial media, such as soil and plant materials, exploiting pre-existing information (e.g. geochemistry, soil data, geophysics, LiDAR, ...)
• Application and further development of statistical methods for highly noisy geochemical data
• Active participation in fieldwork campaigns to acquire data and test sampling methods, incl. handling the samples
• Presentation of own results at project meetings, international conferences and in peer-reviewed journal publications
• Cooperation with other partners from the project and from the center is highly welcome

Your profile

• Very successfully completed studies (Master/Diploma) in the field of statistics, geosciences, forestry or agricultural sciences or related field
• Good background in geostatistics or keen interest to learn it
• Of advantage is experience in (environmental/bio) geochemistry, sound knowledge about ore geology, portable analytical methods and applied statistics
• Structured and solution-oriented working style, analytical thinking and above-average commitment
• Excited about working as a team player in a group of motivated interdisciplinary professionals
• Skills in a data science programming language (e.g. R, Python, Julia)
• Ability to travel and perform field work in Europe
• Very good communication skills in English. Of advantage would also be communication skills in Czech or German

Our offer

• A vibrant research community in an open, diverse and international work environment
• Scientific excellence and extensive professional networking opportunities
• A structured PhD program with a comprehensive range of continuing education and networking opportunities - more information about the PhD program at the HZDR can be found here
• Salary and social benefits in accordance with the collective agreement for the public sector (TVöD-Bund) including 30 days of paid holiday leave, company pension scheme (VBL)
• We support a good work-life balance with the possibility of part-time employment, mobile working and flexible working hours
• Numerous company health management offerings
• Employee discounts with well-known providers via the platform Corporate Benefits
• An employer subsidy for the "Deutschland-Ticket Jobticket"

We look forward to receiving your application documents (including cover letter, CV, diplomas/transcripts, etc.), which you can submit via our online-application-system.