Research Fellow (110337-0325)

For informal enquiries, please contact Gabriele Sosso (Professor) at g.sosso@warwick.ac.uk

Ice nucleation is a fundamental atmospheric process that governs cloud formation, precipitation, and climate regulation. Despite its critical role in weather and climate models, current parameterizations of ice nucleation lack a direct connection to the underlying molecular mechanisms, limiting their predictive accuracy. Understanding how ice forms in the atmosphere - from the atomic scale to cloud-scale dynamics - is essential for improving weather forecasts and climate projections.

This position is funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and is part of a collaborative project between the University of Warwick (Prof. Gabriele C. Sosso) and the University of Leeds (Prof. Ken Carslaw FRS and Dr. Tom Whale). The project is highly interdisciplinary, bridging molecular simulation to atmospheric science via simplified models of ice nucleating surfaces. The successful candidate will play a key role in advancing our understanding of ice nucleation by developing physically motivated "toy models" of ice formation, informed by state-of-the-art molecular dynamics simulations and validated against experimental and field data. The toy models will then be implemented into the Met Office Unified Model of the atmosphere by collaborators at the University of Leeds, significantly improving representation of ice formation in clouds.

Working within the Sosso Group at Warwick, the appointed researcher will leverage high-performance computing resources to conduct extensive molecular simulations of ice nucleation at complex surfaces. The project team includes a second PDRA based at Leeds, ensuring strong links between molecular-scale simulations and atmospheric-scale modelling. This collaborative effort will provide a unique opportunity to work across multiple disciplines, from molecular physics to climate science.

The position offers an exciting opportunity to engage with a world-class research team tackling one of the most pressing challenges in atmospheric science. The successful candidate will be embedded in a dynamic research environment at the University of Warwick and more specifically the Computational and Theoretical Chemistry (CaTCh) group, benefiting from extensive computational resources and close interactions with experimentalists and atmospheric scientists. Through this project, we aim to reshape how ice nucleation is represented in cloud resolving models, improving our ability to predict and respond to environmental change.

Full details of the duties and selection criteria for this role can be found in the vacancy advert on the University of Warwick's jobs pages. You will be routed to this when you click on the 'Apply' button.

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