Prospective Students and Postdoctoral Researchers
We are always keen to recruit dynamic and scientifically motivated researchers to the lab. We often have positions advertised on this page but if you have your own ideas please do get in touch at any time and I would be happy to discuss options with you for joining the group.
Currently available positions in the lab
Exciting two-year postdoctoral fellowship currently available (deadline 23rd June 2023):
The land-sea continuum; burial of terrestrial carbon in marine sediments
The postdoctoral scholar will be based at Umeå University in Sweden, home of the pioneering discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 genetic scissors - a revolution in genetic engineering that has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Background: Nature-based solutions to climate change are recognised as a mechanism for drawing down carbon from the atmosphere. Together with geoengineering, this natural solution is required for reduction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere which are contributing to global warming. At the land-sea interface and continental shelf, sequestration and storage of carbon by marine ecosystems and sediments is a globally significant process that locks away carbon for hundreds to thousands of years. Importantly, the presence of both sequestration and efficient burial are required for marine systems to be effective nature-based solutions. For the subarctic, there is emerging evidence that at millennial time scales, ca. 50% of organic carbon buried in shallow-water marine sediments may be organic material derived from terrestrial and inland water systems via riverine discharge.
The source and type of the organic material entering the oceans will also determine the role marine sediment stores play in climate regulation and sensitivity to disturbance. In particular, sources of terrestrial organic material supplying primarily refractory carbon likely endow marine sediments with better capacity to act as a nature-based solution to climate change.
Project advances beyond the state-of-the-art: We anticipate that the postdoctoral fellow will make key advances in carbon science by; 1) determining the riverine supply of organic carbon from differing terrestrial land uses, 2) its fate in marine waters and sediments, and 3) detecting marine hotspots of organic carbon burial, as well as the carbon donor sources and pathways. These advances will be made by quantifying and determining the source (terrestrial vs. marine) and stability of organic carbon which are transported to and buried in marine sediments of the Baltic Sea along gradients of riverine discharge with contrasting land-use.
This postdoc will be based in the Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences and also the Umeå Marine Sciences Centre. They will be supervised by a multidisciplinary team with complementing expertise in marine and terrestrial carbon cycling.
Specific Qualifications
To qualify for the fellowship, the candidate should have a PhD degree, or a foreign degree that is deemed equivalent, in one of the following fields, biology, biogeochemistry, chemistry, geography or earth science. The candidate shoud have strong skills in organic / inorganic carbon analysis.
Contact Information
Professor Nick Kamenos, Dept. Ecology and Environmental Sciences / Umeå Marine Sciences Centre, nick.kamenos@umu.se
Professor Jan Karlsson, Dept. Ecology and Environmental Sciences / Climate Impacts Research Centre, jan.p.karlsson@umu.se
Dr Cristian Gudasz, Dept. Ecology and Environmental Sciences, cristian.gudasz@umu.se
Application process
Full details of the application process are available here.
Application deadline: 23rd June 2023