MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 - Host in Chemical Engineering - Call for Expressions of Interest

Professor Christophe Bengoa, established at the Technical Superior School of Chemical Engineering (Tarragona, Spain), is interested in receiving Expressions of Interest of potential candidates for the Marie Sklodowska – Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA – PF) 2022 call. Selected candidates will receive dedicated support from my group to write a successful proposal.

The overarching goal of the project is to design, produce and use biobased ionic liquids to separate ingredients from fresh and residual biomass, dry or wet.

Our research axes are focused in circular economy processes:

• Valorisation of biomass (fresh or residual, dry or wet)
• Extraction of ingredients from biomass (fresh or residual, dry or wet)
• Production of interesting molecules from these ingredients: energy or bioblocks

For the Marie Curie PF call of 2022, we are looking for postdoc(s) with demonstrated experience in at least 3 of the 5 following items:

• Design of ionic liquids (requisite)
• Molecular-based models for ionic liquids design
• Extraction of ingredients from biomass
• Evaluation of ecotoxicity of ionic liquids
• Biodegradation of ionic liquids

We are looking for talented and innovative young scientists, strongly committed to high quality frontier research and able to add new insights to the existing URV core expertise. Only candidates with an outstanding record of research achievements and publications in top-quality journals will be considered.

URV as Hosting Institution located at Scientific Campus of Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain), has all the technical and scientific facilities for carry out this project.

Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) is well positioned both nationally and internationally due to the Excellence of its research and the commitment and internationally recognised staff. URV is made up of 12 Faculties and Schools, with 24 Departments, which welcome annually 11.400 undergraduate, 1.500 master and 1.200 PhD students (20% of them full time employees). In 2019, it was named World’s 78th Best Young University aged less than 50 years and 401-500 Best University in the World (by Times Higher Education World University Rankings), and 501-600 by Academic Ranking of world Universities. Being the within the top 10% universities in number and impact of its publications is a clear measure of the quality of the research we can offer to the future MSCA-IF fellows.

Testament to the quality of its research is the fact that URV is host for around 100 MSCA fellows, in different programmes (COFUND, ITN, IF), displaying a strong bond to the principles of the MSCA programme.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

At the deadline for the submission of the proposals (14/09/2022), researchers:

• Shall be in possession of a doctoral degree.
• Must not have resided or carried out their main activities in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the above-mentioned deadline.
• Must be fluent in English (both written and spoken).
• Must have obtained their PhD after the 15^th of September of 2014

SELECTION PROCESS

Researchers willing to apply should check that they fulfil the eligibility criteria and then send an expression of interest, consisting of:

• A Curriculum Vitae
• A summary presentation of their research proposal / A motivation letter

Expressions of interest must be submitted to uspir@urv.cat (Title of the e-mail “URV- MSCA - PF – Dr Bengoa”).

Proposals will be pre-selected based on internal evaluation. Candidates will be informed of the results of the pre-selection a week after the deadline.