Postdoctoral Research Associate in Condensed Matter Physics

The role

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Computational Condensed Matter Physics to work with Professor Stewart Clark in the Department of Physics at Durham University.

The position is to commence in April 2025. It is a fixed-term post for 12 months.

The project involves mainly computational work to exploit GPUs using directive-based accelerator offloading in the Castep code (castep.org). Castep is a leading software package for calculating the properties of materials from first principles using density functional theory. It enables the simulation of a wide range of material properties, including energetics, atomic-level structures, vibrational characteristics, and electronic responses. Notably, Castep offers extensive spectroscopic features that directly correlate with experimental techniques, such as infrared and Raman spectroscopy. A Sternheimer solver underpins the calculation of a variety of such response functions and its performance characteristics is the limiting factor in studying various spectroscopic phenomena such as phonons. Offloading this to GPUs is the core work to be carried out by the PDRA.

Informal enquiries are welcome and should please be directed to Prof Stewart Clark: s.j.clark@durham.ac.uk

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