Berkeley Lab Seeking Applicants for Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Computational Science

The fellowship, sponsored by the Computational Research Division and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center Division at Berkeley Lab, was established to encourage the development and application of tools to advance scientific research. The fellowship enables a recent graduate with a Ph.D. (or equivalent) to acquire further scientific training and to develop professional maturity for independent research. Applicants must be recent graduates (within the past four years) with a strong emphasis on computing or computational science.

The Alvarez Fellowship is offered as a one-year term appointment with the possibility of a one-year renewal. The successful applicant will be compensated with a competitive salary and excellent benefits. Additionally, the successful candidate will have access to the NERSC Center's high-performance computing resources. The successful applicant is expected to be involved in one of the areas that currently have post-doctoral openings, and will be assigned a scientific mentor.

Applications are due by March 3, 2003, for an appointment to coincide with the coming academic year. Interested applicants should submit a letter of application, resume and three letters of reference.

The fellowship is named for Dr. Luis W. Alvarez, the Nobel Laureate and physicist who worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In the 1950s, Alvarez opened a new era in high-energy physics research with his proposal to build a pressurized chamber filled with liquid hydrogen. Known as a "bubble chamber," this device would allow scientists to discover new particles and analyze their behavior. In his 1955 prospectus for such an experimental facility, Alvarez became one of the first scientists to propose using computing devices for analyzing experimental data, even before such computers were actually available.

By the 1960s, Alvarez' vision was reality. His colleagues at Berkeley Lab were using computers to track some 1.5 million particle physics events annually and developed scientific computing techniques which were adopted by researchers around the world. This effort led to Alvarez receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968.

NERSC, which is located at Berkeley Lab, is the Department of Energy's flagship facility for unclassified computing, providing researchers across the country with some of the world's most powerful supercomputers. The Computational Research Division creates computational tools and techniques that enable scientific breakthroughs, by conducting applied research and development in computer science, computational science, and applied mathematics.

"NERSC is proud to offer the Luis W. Alvarez Fellowship in Computational Science as another means of helping educate the next generation of computational scientists," said Horst Simon, director of the Computational Research and NERSC Center divisions. "We encourage those who share Dr. Alvarez' scientific curiosity and dedication to join us in our efforts."

For more information about additional opportunities in Computing Sciences, please visit our web site at www.lbl.gov/CS/Careers.