Jobs
The Operational Directorate “Reference Systems and Planetology” of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), and more specifically its section “Time & Ionosphere”, is proposing a 2 year post doc position for its research activities related to the physics of the ionosphere .
The ROB maintains a time and frequency laboratory, with atomic clocks contributing to the international reference UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
In this field, the Time and Frequency Section also conducts tests of fundamental physics, including the general relativity theory, made possible thanks to the extreme precision and stability of atomic clocks.
The position is open to both UCLouvain and the Royal Observatory of Belgium: it is a 50% academic position at UCLouvain and a 50% scientific position at the Royal Observatory of Belgium. The person recruited must hold both positions; the expected activities will be carried out on the sites of both partners, at the level of 50% on each of them. This joint position, which involves strong interaction between the two institutions, is planned for a period of 10 years. At the end of this period, UCLouvain will take on the successful candidate on a full-time basis within its academic framework.
To ensure the successful continuation of our operations in this highly competitive international context, ROB is se eking a collaborator to further develop and support its space weather services.
GENESIS will be launched in 2027. It is the first-ever satellite with all four space-based geodetic techniques on-board, namely Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and Doppler Orbitography and Radio-positioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS). The main mission objective is to improve the international terrestrial coordinate frame (International Terrestrial Reference Frame, ITRF). Furthermore, the GENESIS mission will allow to improve the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF), and there with the link between the two frames, and thus the Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP). The Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) participates in the GENESIS mission by ensuring that it can achieve its scientific goals and follows the development of the novel VLBI transmitter (VT) as well as its scientific use.