PhD student position

In this project, you will have a key role in the development of characterization methods for heterogenous soft matter, in particular materials of wood-based origin. The focus will be NMR spectroscopy, adapted with the emerging dynamic nuclear polarization technique, using the only instrument of its kind so far in Scandinavia.

Project description
Wallenberg Wood Science Center (WWSC) is a research center striving for scientific excellence with a focus on new materials from trees. The center creates knowledge and builds competence for an innovative and sustainable future value creation from forest raw materials. WWSC is a multidisciplinary collaboration between KTH, Chalmers, and Linköping University. The base is a donation from Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, and the forest industry is supporting WWSC via the national platform Treesearch.

As a PhD student, you will be part of WWSC and join the activities at the Division of Applied Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Sustainable development is a central matter at the division where research is mainly directed with an applied focus and mostly concerns the development of new materials. In this specific project, wood-based cellulosic materials are at focus. The growing interest in these materials is accompanied by a demand on the research community to develop suitable characterization techniques to measure and understand chemical and physical properties in materials with high degree of complexity.

Major responsibilities
The ambition of this PhD project is to adapt and develop methods by exploiting the use of dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) assisted solid-state NMR spectroscopy. DNP-NMR allows for unique analysis of interfacial chemistry (of great advantage for heterogeneous materials) and radial depth distribution of chemical modification (in nano- to micrometer scale). Highly relevant are methods determining atomistic information selectively of surface and of bulk part in modified cellulose well as the functionality distributions in the anhydroglucose unit. Moreover, methods should also provide possibility to acquire interactions between adjacent but different molecular structures in blended materials.

During your education as a PhD student, you will communicate the results from your project by publishing articles in relevant peer-reviewed international scientific journals and by participating to national and international meetings and conferences. Within the daily work as a PhD student, our ambition is that you find variation and interact with not only other PhD students, but also undergraduate students, senior researchers and professors. A particularly important infrastructure for this PhD project is the Swedish NMR Centre where most of the experimental work will be carried out.

As a member of the Wallenberg Wood Science Center you will also have the opportunity to participate in the Wallenberg Wood Science Center Academy courses and activities, which take place at different locations in Sweden and the Nordic Countries.

Your major responsibilities are to pursue your own doctoral studies. You are expected to develop your own scientific concepts and communicate the results of your research verbally and in writing. The position generally also includes teaching on Chalmers' undergraduate level or performing other duties corresponding to 20 per cent of working hours.

Qualifications
The most important qualification is your desire to devotedly work with research. You have a Master's level degree corresponding to at least 240 higher education credits in chemistry, physics, materials science, chemical engineering, or equivalent. Experience in NMR spectroscopy is highly valuable, solid-state NMR in particular. You appreciate to work experimentally with instruments and also with theoretical tools from the perspective of physical chemistry.

The position requires sound verbal and written communication skills in English. If Swedish is not your native language, Chalmers offers Swedish courses.

Contract terms
Full-time temporary employment. The position is limited to a maximum of five years.

We offer
Chalmers offers a cultivating and inspiring working environment in the coastal city of Gothenburg. 
Read more about working at Chalmers and our benefits for employees.

Chalmers aims to actively improve our gender balance. We work broadly with equality projects, for example the GENIE Initiative on gender equality for excellence. Equality and diversity are substantial foundations in all activities at Chalmers.

Application procedure
The application should be marked with Ref 20220530 and written in English. The application should be sent electronically and be attached as PDF-files, as below. Maximum size for each file is 40 MB. Please note that the system does not support Zip files.

CV: (Please name the document: CV, Family name, Ref. number)
• CV
• Other, for example previous employments or leadership qualifications and positions of trust.
• Two references that we can contact.

Personal letter: (Please name the document as: Personal letter, Family name, Ref. number)
1-3 pages where you:
• Introduce yourself
• Describe your previous experience of relevance for the position (e.g. education, thesis work and, if applicable, any other research activities)
• Describe your future goals and future research focus

Application deadline: 15 November, 2022

For questions, please contact:
Professor Lars Evenäs, lars.evenas@chalmers.se,
Tel: +46-(0)31 772 2973

*** Chalmers declines to consider all offers of further announcement publishing or other types of support for the recruiting process in connection with this position. ***