POLONEZ BIS fellowship December call in Poland: NOMATEN is looking for applicants

NOMATEN (Centre of Excellence for Advanced, multifunctional materials), located in Otwock, Poland (Warsaw Area), hosted by the National Centre for Nuclear Research, and jointly partnered CEA, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and the Finnish Technical Research Center, VTT is looking for candidate applicants for the POLONEZ BIS fellowship programme within the field of theoretical condensed matter, chemical physics, materials science and metallurgy,

The purpose of the call is to help researchers develop their professional careers by supporting their international mobility and to fund their ambitious research projects at the best Polish research institutions. The call is addressed to researchers who hold a PhD degree or have at least 4 years of full-time equivalent research experience and who have not lived, studied or been employed in Poland for an uninterrupted period of over 12 months within 3 years prior to the call launch.

The fellowship budget covers the pay of the principal investigator (applicant) and research team members, including scholarships for students and PhD students, as well as project-related costs. for which a maximum sum of 100,000 € may be available. The duration of the fellowship is 2 years and the PI will get a monthly salary well in excess of 4000 € / month which is taxed in a very reasonable manner.

We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, including those suffering recently professional and / or private hardships. We provide mentoring for potential candidates.

Below are the descriptions of two materials theory research groups at NOMATEN, but candidate PIs in experimental materials science and radiopharmaceuticals research are also encouraged to consider this opportunity (groups of Lukasz Kurpaska, Iwona Jozwik, and Marek Pruzynski, all [email protected]; nomaten.ncbj.gov.pl).

Materials Complexity’ group

Group Leader: prof. Mikko Alava (also NOMATEN director), contact email: [email protected]

Our research is about the fundamental physical phenomena behind the performance of materials. Recent research exploits machine learning and molecular dynamics coupled to statistical mechanics to understand yielding, instabilities in plasticity, and fracture. Much of the work is done with a combination of experiment and theory and in collaboration with other NOMATEN groups (see the MASIF publications). Some of our recent publications below.

  1.  Henri Salmenjoki, Mikko J. Alava, and Lasse Laurson, Machine learning plastic deformation of crystals, Nature Communications 9, 5307 (2018).
  2.  Henri Salmenjoki, Arttu Lehtinen, Lasse Laurson, and Mikko J. Alava, Plastic yielding and deformation bursts in the presence of disorder from coherent precipitates, Phys. Rev. Materials 4, 083602 (2020).
  3.  Ivan V Lomakin, Tero Mäkinen, Kim Widell, Juha Savolainen, Sebastian Coffeng, Juha Koivisto, Mikko J Alava, Fatigue crack growth in an aluminum alloy: Avalanches and coarse graining to growth laws, Physical Review Research 3, L042029 (2021).
  4.  A Esfandiarpour, S Papanikolaou, M Alava, Edge dislocations in multi-component solid solution alloys: Beyond traditional elastic depinning, Physical Review Research 4, L022043 (2022).

Materials Structure, Informatics and Function (MASIF) group:

Group Leader: Hab Dr. Stefanos Papanikolaou, contact email: [email protected]

The MASIF group is focused on the development of multiscale modeling and machine learning approaches towards the advancement of materials science for extreme conditions, such as high temperature and irradiation. We use similarities, and analogies towards developing process-structure-property relationships in novel material classes, for identifying cheap, lightweight, strong and ductile materials. We utilize methods such as ab-initio simulations (VASP, Q-Espresso), molecular dynamics simulations (LAMMPS), discrete dislocation dynamics simulations (PARADIS and others), and continuum plasticity models (DAMASK and others). Recent highlights include the development of multiscale understanding of deformation mechanisms in pure metals and the development of a method for identifying yield points in materials through the use of camera-obtained surface map sequences.

See details on the research expertise of the group in recent publications:
1.      K. Frydrych, K. Karimi, M. Pecelerowicz, R. Alvarez, F.J. Dominguez-Gutiérrez, F. Rovaris, S. Papanikolaou, Materials informatics for mechanical deformation: A review of applications and challenges, Materials, 2021, 14, 5764.
2.      F.J. Domínguez-Gutiérrez, S. Papanikolaou, A. Esfandiarpour, P. Sobkowicz, M. Alava, Nanoindentation of single crystalline Mo: Atomistic defect nucleation and thermomechanical stability, Materials Science and Engineering: A, 826, 2021, 141912, ISSN 0921-5093, DOI:10.1016/j.msea.2021.141912
3.      Xu RG, Song H, Leng Y, Papanikolaou S. A Molecular Dynamics Simulations Study of the Influence of Prestrain on the Pop-In Behavior and Indentation Size Effect in Cu Single Crystals. Materials. 2021 Jan;14(18):5220.
4.      Papanikolaou S, Alava MJ. Direct detection of plasticity onset through total-strain profile evolution. Physical Review Materials. 2021 Aug 6;5(8):083602.

Official website of the POLONEZ BIS programme:  https://polonezbis.eu/en/

The deadline for submitting proposals via the OSF submission system is 15 December, 2022 (4:00 p.m. CEST).