PhD candidate or postdoc in nuclear magnetic resonance systems engineering

ERC Synergy Grant Staff Opportunity

Our recently funded ERC Synergy Grant HiSCORE seeks to advance hyperpolarisation, miniaturisation, parallelisation and spin dynamics, and combine these research themes for highly informative drug discovery by nuclear magnetic resonance. We believe that, eventually, magnetic resonance can provide an in- depth biophysical characterisation of drug candidates in a much shorter time than today, and become a very effective platform for rapid drug discovery.

This highly interdisciplinary project is run by four laboratories (Geoffrey Bodenhausen, Arno Kentgens, Jan G. Korvink, and Benno Meier) in three institutions (ENS Paris, Radboud University Nijmegen, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). Our partners Alvar Gossert (ETH Zürich) and Claudio Dalvit (Trento) complete our team with strong expertise in magnetic resonance (MR) based drug discovery.

We now invite applications from prospective PhD candidates, postdocs and research engineers to join this ambitious research programme. Several positions are available, and we expect frequent and in-depth exchanges between the participating labs. PhD positions will be supervised jointly, and enable one to obtain experience in the participating institutions. The focus of the individual labs, along with open positions, is detailed below.

The IMT lab headed by Jan G. Korvink will develop micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) technologies for parallel NMR signal chains, starting from microfluidics for sample handling, shimmed detector sites, application-specific integrated circuits (CMOS ASICs) for radiofrequency transmission and detection chains, and for NMR signal processing.

The IMT lab is equipped with a 500 MHz WB with liquid, solid, and imaging probes, a small animal 650 MHz horizontal wide bore, a 350 MHz variable field horizontal wide bore; and numerous low field electromagnetic and permanent magnets. In addition, HiSCORE will provide a 150 mm (6”) 3D nanolithography system. IMT has excellent lithography systems available (E-beam, UV projection, UV direct-write, multiple two-photon Nanoscribe systems) and cleanroom processes (ICP, ALD, Sputtering, Electroplating), a fully equipped RF lab, as well as packaging and assembly processes needed for microsystem engineering.

The IMT lab invites applications of enthusiastic, qualified postdoctoral and doctoral candidates, with a university degree in physics or engineering, and with previous experience in one of the following areas: CMOS design, microfluidics, MEMS, and nuclear magnetic resonance hardware design, to focus on one of the following topics:

• CMOS mixed signal design for massively parallel NMR detection chains.

• Massively parallel microfluidic sample handling.

• Massively parallel microfluidic NMR detectors with high spectral resolution.