Jobs

If you have reached this page, you are probably interested in joining the EMPG in some capacity. This page lists opportunities known to us. The EMPG sits across two universities and applications are typically university-dependent. Typically one would apply to the university of the potential supervisor/collaborator.

Postdoctoral opportunities

There are a number of prestigious postdoctoral fellowships which you can apply for to work in our research group. These are listed below. Please see their websites for more details regarding the applications and their timings. We encourage interested candidates to contact the faculty member closest to their research interests. We can help with the application process.

• Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (3 years)
• EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowships (intradisciplinary) (3 years)
• Research Fellowships from the Royal Commission of 1851 (3 years)
• Newton International Fellowships (2 years). This is for people currently based overseas.
• Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships
• The UoE's Seggie Brown Fellowships (2 years) Normally advertised in November.
• STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowships (5 years)
• EPSRC Early Career Fellowships (intradisciplinary) (5 years)
• Royal Society University Research Fellowships (5 years, extendable to 8 years) Open to EU/EEA citizens and those who have worked at EU/EEA universities.
• ERC Grants (5 years)
• Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Fellowships (up to 2 years)

Postgraduate opportunities

University of Edinburgh

Please see the supervision availability described here.

Heriot-Watt Univeristy

We typically require a strong undergraduate degree in Mathematics and/or Physics and a Masters degree (or equivalent) in Mathematics and/or Mathematical/Theoretical Physics. Instructions on how to apply can be found here. We actively encourage applications from women and under-represented minority candidates.

At present the group consists of the following members, with the following research interests and supervision availability.

• Richard Davison

  My work focuses on understanding the dynamics of strongly interacting quantum states of matter. These arise directly in important physical systems (like the quark-gluon plasma and strongly correlated materials), and are closely connected to black holes via the AdS/CFT correspondence. Much of my work involves using black hole toy models arising from the AdS/CFT correspondence, or hydrodynamic approximations, in order to obtain simple descriptions of the behaviour of these complicated states. I am open to taking a new PhD student this year.

• Lotte Hollands

  PhD projects with Lotte Hollands will be on the interface between supersymmetric gauge theory/string theory and topics in geometry/topology/integrable systems. This could for instance be on open questions in the duality between four-dimensional N=2 field theories and Hitchin integrable systems, on trying to lift this duality to five dimensions where it connects to topics in topological string theory, or on understanding higher symmetries/defects in these theories.

• Anatoly Konechny

  I am interested in two-dimensional conformal field theories and in renormalisation group flows between them. I have been working on developing various 2D CFT techniques such as conformal bootstrap, constructing conformal boundary conditions and interfaces and describing their fusion. I am always looking into deriving new constraints on RG flows, particularly from local RG equations, RG interfaces and from topological interfaces.

  Recently my work focused on two topics: RG interfaces for bulk and boundary flows in 2D and on networks of topological interfaces (attached to conformal boundaries) and constraints following from them for RG flows.

• Christian Saemann

  My interests lie in classical and quantum field theories, supersymmetry, string theory as well as the applications of methods and concepts from category theory, group theory, differential and algebraic geometry in theoretical physics. At the moment I am particularly interested in methods and techniques from higher category theory and homotopical algebra on the mathematical side and scattering amplitudes, extended field theory and T-/U-duality as well as the (2,0)-theory and higher gauge theories in general on the physical side. I am open to taking a new PhD student this year.

• Richard Szabo

  My research focuses on applications of a variety of mathematical areas to problems in theoretical physics, some of which require development of new mathematical notions inspired by physics. On the mathematics side I have worked extensively on noncommutative geometry, K-theory, algebraic and differential geometry, category theory and homotopical algebra, with applications on the physics side to problems in string theory, quantum field theory, supersymmetric gauge theory, gravity, and quantum mechanics. My recent work has focused on applications of some of these techniques to rigorous constructions of doubled/extended geometry and non-geometric backgrounds in string theory/M-theory, and the construction of a nonassociative theory of gravity which is believed to govern the low-energy dynamics of strings/membranes in some of these backgrounds. I have also taken a recent interest in higher-dimensional cohomological gauge theories and their applications to the enumeration problems in Calabi-Yau geometry, as well as in anomalies and their applications to topological phases of matter. I am open to taking on a new PhD student this year.