MSCA-IF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Stratigraphy and Paleontology

Professor Antonio García-Alix Daroca, from the Department of Stratigraphy and Paleontology at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF) in 2019 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information: http://sl.ugr.es/09Qg).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. It serves more than 60000 students per year, including many foreign students, as UGR is the leader host institution in the Erasmus program. UGR, featuring 3650 professors and more than 2000 auxiliary personnel, offers a total of 75 degrees through its 112 departments and 28 centers.

UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top 5/10 of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding. UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking (http://www.arwu.org/), and it is also well recognized for its web presence (http://www.4icu.org/top200/).

Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of H2020, both at partner and coordination. For the duration of the Seventh Framework Programme, the UGR has obtained a total of 66 projects, with total funding of 17.97 million euros, and for H2020, until 2015, more than 25 projects with total funding of more than 6 million euros. Our more than 3,000 researchers are grouped into 365 research groups covering all scientific fields and disciplines.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group

The overall research topic of our group is the reconstruction of the physical and biological conditions of ancient environments, by means of multidisciplinary approaches, in order to evaluate their response to past climatic fluctuations. In this way, we can understand the past, present and predict future global environmental changes. We develop these studies from three main points of view:

1. Paleoecological and paleoenvironmental studies of fossil mammals. The combination of traditional paleontological and cutting-edge geochemical approaches allows us to better understand the diets and trophic relationships of Neogene and Quaternary mammals, as well as the paleoenvironments where they lived.
2. Paleolimnology (reconstruction of paleoenvironments and paleohydrology from lacustrine records). Our group studies Quaternary paleolimnological records from different latitudes, including the southern Iberian Peninsula, northern England and Scotland, to understand changes in the vegetation, paleohydrology and paleotemperatures by means of a multi-proxy approach, (i.e. pollen, geochemical, and charcoal analyses).
3. Anthropogenic impact in the environment: It was a spin-off from the previous one, and it is becoming more important for our group, as it is essential to quantify the human impact on the natural background to decipher between natural and human-induced environmental/climatic changes. We use similar proxies as in the previous line, but focused on the last 2000 years.

Project description

The candidate will develop his/her research in the line of “Reconstruction of past environments”, including  paleoclimate and paleohydrology. The candidate will use sedimentological, geochemical, and/or geophysical methods. The study of the relationship between the natural environmental background and the anthropogenic impact on the environment (following a multiproxy approach) would be a potential topic for the candidate. For example, our research has identified the oldest lead pollution record in Europe related to old mining and metallurgical activities by means of the analyses of heavy metal in lacustrine sediments. We are also developing new paleoenvironmental proxies using compound-specific biomarkers. In this way, we are testing the identification of livestock development in different regions by means of the analyses of faecal specific-compounds in the sediments, the use of long-chain diols to reconstruct paleotemperatures, or the analyses of deuterium and carbon isotopes in leaf waxes (mainly n-alkanes) to reconstruct past hydrology or Saharan dust inputs in European lakes. These cutting-edge approaches are useful tools either in sedimentary records or archaeological contexts.

The candidate will join a very dynamic group with experience leading national and international peleoenvironmental projects. This research covers the latest trends in research and development (I+D) of the European Union, i.e.  the Horizon 2020 area “Environment & Climate Action”, or  the “Reto en Acción sobre el cambio climático” from the Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación (Spanish MINECO). Therefore, this research it is very likely to be funded at national and international levels.

Research Area

Environmental Sciences and Chemistry (ENV-CHE)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Antonio García-Alix Daroca (agalix @ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)