14 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stockholm University, Sweden

This recruitment is connected to the Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability (WISE), wise-materials.org. WISE, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, is the largest-ever investment in materials science in Sweden and will encompass major efforts at Sweden’s foremost universities over the course of 10 years. The vision is a sustainable future through materials science. Read more: https://wise-materials.org.

All early-stage researchers recruited into the WISE program will be a part of the WISE Graduate School, wise-materials.org/research/graduate-school/, an ambitious nationwide program of seminars, courses, research visits, and other activities to promote a strong multi-disciplinary and international network between PhD students, postdocs, researchers and industry.

The aim of this project is to develop nanoporous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and to investigate their crystal structures and interactions with guest species using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and 3D electron diffraction (3DED). Novel MOFs will be synthesized using structure directing agents (SDAs), and the interactions between the MOF and SDA will be investgated. Additionally, the crystalline sponge method will be utilized to load synthesized MOFs with guest species of interest, and the structures of the guests in the pores will be determined.

To further broaden our research profile, the Contaminant Chemistry Unit within the Department of Environmental Science is recruiting a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with an open research focus. We invite young scientists interested in a postdoctoral position to submit proposals for a 2-year research project. The project should build on/complement the existing strengths in the Department of Environmental Science while introducing new research questions or methods. The Contaminant Chemistry Unit currently consists of 6 research groups (Benskin, Cousins, MacLeod, McLachlan, Posselt, and Sobek). Our research programs examine the occurrence and behavior of pollutants in the environment and in the technosphere. Areas of particular interest include the discovery of new contaminants, understanding the physical, chemical, and biological pathways that contaminants follow, and the development of novel tools and techniques for sampling and analysis. We strive to synthesize our scientific understanding about the sources, transport, transformation, bioaccumulation of environmental contaminants into mathematical models that inspire new scientific hypotheses and support environmental decision-making.

The purpose of this project is to develop novel routes for chemical upcycling, assembly and processing of organic waste into thermally insulating foams with a specific strength in the wet state that is superior or on par to fossil-based insulating materials. The postdoctoral fellow is expected to identify and upcycle fibrillar and polymeric starting materials from organic waste, develop environmentally benign processing and cross-linking routes to produce thermally insulating and moisture resilient foams, and characterise the structure of the foams with a combination of e.g. SEM, AFM, and SAXS/WAXS. The postdoctoral fellow will also be responsible to characterise the relative humidity-dependent mechanical properties and thermal conductivity with e.g. Hotdisk thermal analyzer and Instron universal testing machine.

The Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies is seeking a 3-year postdoctoral researcher in palaeogenomics with placement at the Centre for Palaeogenetics. The postdoc will join the First Contact project, funded through a grant from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The postdoctoral project is aimed at analyzing ancient DNA from sediments dated to the Late Pleistocene, with a primary focus on lake and fjord sediments collected on Greenland during the Geoeo24 expedition.

The project will include laboratory work such as extracting and sequencing DNA from the lake cores as well as metagenomic and barcoding techniques for generating and analyzing the data. The main goal of the project is to analyses the genetic data in the light of what we know about the earliest humans on Greenland.

The postdoctoral position is located at the Department of Law and is tied to the Stockholm Center on Global Governance (SCGG). SCGG is a center of excellence at Stockholm University, which is funded by the Swedish Research Council and which promotes interdisciplinary research about global governance. The center also offers teaching and societal engagement on the topic of global governance. The postdoctor will be part of a group of five postdoctors with different disciplinary backgrounds joining the center.

The postdoctoral postion will be part of the 4-year research project “Achieving High Integrity Voluntary Climate Action” (ACHIEVE), funded by the European Union’s HORIZON EUROPE Research Innovation Program and led by Radboud University in the Netherlands. An unprecedented number of voluntary climate commitments have been made by a wide array of non-state and subnational actors. Together, these actions can contribute significantly to the achievement of the Paris Climate Agreement.Yet, non-state and local actors’ environmental claims are often unsubstantiated. Integrity is therefore key to realizing the promise of voluntary climate action by many actors, and to actually prevent and combat climate change. The ACHIEVE research project will identify opportunities to strengthen and scale up voluntary climate action, with the aim of achieving a worldwide net-zero society by 2050.

At the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University, Karin Bäckstrand is coordinating a work package on governance and regulation of non-state climate committemtns within the ACHIEVE project, which will investifate: (1) whether and how national regulations and policies affect the emergence and effectiveness of high-integrity voluntary climate action by non-state actors in selected countries; (2) the extent to which high integrity principles are promoted among memberships of voluntary climate action platforms and initiatives in the selected countries; and (3) whether and how high integrity voluntary climate action by non-state actors support effective regulations at the national and EU levels.

Mixed methods will be employed in the project for instance: (1) tracking and assessing national regulations and policies; (2) an expert survey targeting members of voluntary climate action to map perceptions among representatives of business, cities, NGOs, trade unions, etc; (3) comparative case studies and employing methods of process tracing, and semi-structured interviews with key leading members of the selected national climate action platforms as well as government officials.

The postdoctoral postion will be part of the 4-year research project “Rising to the Challenge of the Climate Transition: EU’s Leadership in a Just and Effective Transformation towards Climate Neutrality amidst Turbulence, Crises, and Political Conflicts”, funded by the Swedish Research Council on Sustainable Development (FORMAS). Aiming to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, the European Union’s (EU) implementation of the European Green Deal, the ‘Fit for 55’ package and the 2040 climate targets is complicated by turbulence compounded by multiple crises, such as Russia’s war against Ukraine, the energy crisis and the economic recession. This project examines the efforts by the EU and selected Member states to accelerate the transformation toward a climate-neutral society through a theoretical framework on the interaction between turbulence and policy change and a mixed methods design (document analysis, interviews, surveys).

The aim of the project is to examine how the implementation of the EU’s climate and energy legislation affect its ability to achieve an effective and just climate transition under conditions of crises. By examining (1) the effectiveness of the Fit for 55 package and EU’s prospects to achieve its mid-term and long-term targets and secure a global leadership: (2) the political conflicts and implementation challenges, and (3) the implications for a just transition, this project contributes to the understanding of the politics and policy of EU’s climate transition.

The project will provide policy-relevant knowledge and recommendations on how to make EU’s decarbonization and green transition more effective, just and legitimate. The project is led by Karin Bäckstrand at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University. Other project consortium members are Sebastian Oberthür at the Brussels School of Governance at Vrije University Brussels and Charles Parker at the Department of Political Science at Uppsala University.

The successful candidate will primarily work on two projects. The first project explores dynamic behavior of quantum matter, quantum information systems (Q bits, sensors), quantum light matter interactions and entangled and hidden quantum orders. The second project explores computational modeling and materials informatics search for novel quantum states in materials using ab initio and machine learning techniques. For ongoing research please visit group page: tqmatter.org.

The position is associated with the project “Opportunities and hindrances to conducting business in Sweden” (see project description here), bridging organizational psychology and entrepreneurship. The project is led by Researcher Constanze Eib and Professor Claudia Bernhard-Oettel. We wish to hire a researcher for the final year of the project to support data analysis and preparation of co-authored manuscripts.

The postdoctoral position is located at the Department of Philosophy and is tied to the Stockholm Center on Global Governance (SCGG). SCGG is a center of excellence at Stockholm University, which is funded by the Swedish Research Council and which promotes interdisciplinary research about global governance. The center also offers teaching and societal engagement on the topic of global governance. The postdoc will be part of a group of four postdocs with different disciplinary backgrounds joining the center.
The postdoc will contribute to the center’s research environment and proactively participate in the center activities. This includes lectures, workshops, and conferences, and the organization of seminars.

This postdoctoral Fellow will be working as part of the project “Financial risks of climate impacts on seafood production”. This is a three-year project (December 2023 – December 2026) led by the Stockholm Resilience Centre in partnership with the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions and the University of California in Santa Cruz.

The purpose of the project is to better understand the financial risk to seafood businesses from climate impacts on marine fish populations and co-design actionable strategies companies can take to reduce these risks, including climate adaption strategies in fisheries management. To achieve these goals, we will engage with seafood companies, including members of the science-industry collaboration Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship, or SeaBOS.

The key objectives of the project are to 1) conduct landscape analyses on climate change impacts on commercial marine wild capture seafood production and different adaptation strategies/tools for building climate resilience in seafood production; 2) develop and apply a methodology to map and specify financial risks of climate change impacts on industrial fisheries; and 3) create publicly-available toolkits for industry to integrate climate resilience into their business operations and supply chains.

Climate warming is rapidly changing Arctic environments. The consequences can already now be observed, and include permafrost thaw, increased microbial degradation of soil organic matter to CO2 and other greenhouse gases, but also wide-spread stimulation of plant primary production and CO2 uptake, deeper plant rooting and shifts in vegetation distribution. In addition, plants can accelerate decomposition of soil organic matter decomposition near their roots to CO2 (“rhizosphere priming effect”), and this effect might substantially enhance Arctic CO2 emissions.

The advertized position will be associated with the ERC Starting Grant project PRIMETIME that aims to quantify total plant impacts on CO2 emissions from a warming Arctic, using a combination of experimental and upscaling approaches

According to the Randolph Glacier Inventory, Sweden has currently 269 glaciers, of which some are threated by extinction. The first modern swedish glacier change inventory, derived from satellite imagery, shows that since 2017, Swedish glaciers have lost ca 11% of their area, though volume losses cannot be quantified with certainty. Volume loss quantification requires knowledge of the ice-bed interface, which is not available for the majority of the Swedish glaciers. For a few glaciers in the Kebnekaise massif, subglacial topography was acquired from 1970s-2000s, but these have limited use as input to modern numerical glacier dynamics models, because many were acquired with analogue radar systems, pre-GNSS positioning, and data are not openly available.

Under “business as usual” emission scenarios, 4 out of 5 glaciers in Sweden are predicted to have retreated considerably, or vanished, by 2100. Notably, this already initiated glacier retreat is accompanied by other substantial changes. For example, glacier thermal and hydrological processes, such as thinning of the cold surface layer in polythermal glaciers like Storglaciären, and the potential impact on surface-to-bed meltwater transport processes due to recent increases in moulin occurrence.

Geophysical methods such as radio-echo sounding (RES) allow for both mapping of subglacial topography, and for studying englacial architecture and dynamics. Within a pilot project in collaboration with Prof. Neil Ross/Newcastle University/UK conducted during spring 2024 (here referred to as TRS-RES), TRS has acquired RES data at Storglaciären, Moarhhmáglaciäern, and Rivgojiehkki, three of Sweden’s four reference glaciers for which reports are sent annually to the World Glacier Monitoring Service. Data was acquired from the ground as well as from airborne (helicopter) systems, and will be extended to Rabots Glacier (the fouth Swedish reference glacier) and several others in the near future. RES missions have so far been carried out to establish modern reference ice thicknesses and subglacial topography, but the next step in the project will focus on englacial architecture and glaciological processes and dynamics.

TRS is now looking for a postdoctoral fellow to support, and work with, TRS-RES. The selected candidate is offered an exciting opportunity to join the TRS-RES research team, with both TRS and SU as a workplace, and with Prof. Nina Kirchner (TRS) and Prof. Neil Ross (Newcastle U, TRS collaborator) as advisors. 

The project aims to explore the quantum dynamics of many-body-quantum systems, and their thermodynamics in the quantum regime from a quantum information perspective. The research will focus on both theoretical and computational approaches to exploring the fundamental limits thermodynamics and quantum mechanics impose on the emergence of time periodic behaviors in many-body-quantum condensates, and the limits on achievable cooling in many-body-quantum systems. The project requires expertise in quantum measurement and control, quantum thermodynamics, as well as familiarity to the theory of quantum condensates.