Applications are invited at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium for a full-time Research Associate to work in the areas of advanced data visualization, statistical analysis and machine learning within the project "Decoding the asteroid belt, Rosetta stone of our solar system" led by Dr Apostolos Christou and funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Grant RPG-2023-266).
The post-holder will be working within the Armagh solar system group to develop, optimize and validate advanced Artificial Intelligence models (Neural Networks) and Data Visualization protocols aimed to identify groups (“families”) of asteroids created by collisions during the 4.6 billion-year history of the solar system. Use of these new techniques will push the state-of-the-art in family identification and may be of use for future observational survey products, such as the decadal Legacy Survey in Space and Time (LSST). Scheduled to commence in 2025, the LSST will discover some 6 million Main Belt asteroids (10x the present number) and enable the development of the most detailed chronology to-date of our solar system’s evolution.
In carrying out the research programme, the post-holder will avail of AOP in-house computing resources, including a shared high-performance computing server and a state-of-the-art Data Visualization Laboratory facility, recently acquired as part of AOP’s strategic investment in the use of immersive data visualization as a research tool.
Closing Date – Friday 17th May 2024.
