Institute of Astronomy

This is an exciting opportunity for an ambitious data scientist to work at the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) in the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) as part of the Gaia and PLATO system development teams.

Gaia is space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 2013 and expected to operate until 2025. Gaia's key objective is a detailed study of the Milky Way that will reveal our Galaxy's content, dynamics, current state and formation history.

PLATO is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission that will detect and characterise a huge sample of exoplanets around bright stars. Within the PLATO Consortium, the IoA team are responsible for the development and operation of the Exoplanet Analysis System, which will enable the detection of the signatures of exoplanets from high-precision photometric light curves of the host stars.

The successful candidate will work within CASU's Gaia and PLATO software development teams. The main tasks will be in data analysis and development of novel scientific algorithms and applications in the areas of photometric and spectrophotometric processing (Gaia) and photometric light curve analysis (PLATO). The role will also involve: contributions to the software infrastructure, liaising with the wider PLATO and Gaia project teams and external science users; contributing to the documentation and user manuals; and collaborating in the Gaia and PLATO exoplanet related research programs to optimise interpretation and use of such Gaia and PLATO data. The role will include opportunities to interact with the wider CASU team.

https://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/36870/