PhD Candidate: Glaciology & Glacier Hazard Modeling

ETH Zurich; Zürich; On-site; CHF 55,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

The Doctoral Student role at ETH Zurich's Glaciology group invites applications for the ICEFAL project in Zürich for four years. It sits within ETH's VAW and collaborates with WSL, aiming to assess ice temperatures and hazards in high-mountain glaciers using fieldwork and thermo-mechanical modeling.

Applicants should hold a Master’s in geophysics or related fields, have excellent English (C1–C2), enjoy team work, and be willing to conduct alpine fieldwork and apply geospatial tools (QGIS) and

Qualifications

• Master's degree in geophysics, physics, environmental or earth science, environmental engineering, or related fields
• Excellent knowledge of English, both in oral and written form (C1 to C2)

Responsibilities

• Create an inventory of hanging glaciers using manual mapping and possibly machine-learning aided approaches
• Perform field measurements at high-elevation sites in Switzerland
• Collect measurements of ice temperatures, complemented with mass balance measurements, firn cores, and long-term ice-avalanche data analyses
• Leverage field and meteorological data to drive a thermo-mechanical model (Elmer/Ice) to study temperature evolution and stability
• Predict basal temperatures of hanging glaciers and derive a hazard index for the study region

Skills

English proficiency

Education

Master's degree in geophysics or related field

Tools

QGIS

Python

MATLAB

Job description

The Doctoral Student role at ETH Zurich's Glaciology group invites applications for the ICEFAL project in Zürich for four years. It sits within ETH's VAW and collaborates with WSL, aiming to assess ice temperatures and hazards in high-mountain glaciers using fieldwork and thermo-mechanical modeling.

Applicants should hold a Master’s in geophysics or related fields, have excellent English (C1–C2), enjoy team work, and be willing to conduct alpine fieldwork and apply geospatial tools (QGIS) and