Post-doctoral Position in Synchrotron X-ray Computed Tomography and Materials Science

Post-doctoral Position in Synchrotron X-ray Computed Tomography and Materials Science

SOLEIL Synchrotron

Saint-Aubin, France

Mission

The postdoctoral fellow will be stationed at Soleil and conduct experiments at several beamlines with a primary focus on X-ray tomography experiments at Psiché and Anatomix. He will work under the joint supervision of Henry Proudhon (Directeur de recherche, Mines Paris - PSL) and Andrew King (beamline scientist et Psiché). He will also work in collaboration with other material scientists at PSL University to facilitate beamtime applications for research projects targeting material recycling studies. This includes meetings in Paris and participation in seminars organized within the MATRIX project to disseminate the use of synchrotron radiation for material science studies.

She/He will actively participate to the user-support program (X-ray computed tomography and materials science) and will be involved in the scientific, technical, and methodological activities imaging beamlines. That means preparing the beamline for the experiments, helping the users with the management of experimental setups, data acquisition and data treatment if necessary.

She/He will develop a research program (see next section). She/He will be granted in-house research beam time while also submitting proposals to the peer review committees. She/He will publish her/his results and present them at national and international conferences.

Responsibility and Tasks

The main research topic of the postdoc will be the study of material recycling using 3D imaging. This covers several subtopics under developments at PSL university such as the mechanical properties (mechanical strength, fatigue) of recycled alloys (sometimes called the science of dirty alloys), new material routes to recycle waste from electronic equipment (WEEE), metal recycling through liquid phase (dissolution of metal scraps in lixiviant foam solutions), enzymatic recycling of plastics, etc. The focus of this research could cover multi-resolution imaging, in situ mechanical testing and innovative 3D imaging experiments of new recycling routes or recycled materials under load. The candidate is expected to be deeply involved in data analysis and in developing automated data processing pipelines.

This is an exciting and rapidly growing field where 3D imaging can really make a difference. Automated imaging processing through AI tools is a key to be able to analyse data from high throughput 4D experiments. To achieve this, supervised semantic segmentation needs to be deployed in production environments (the beamlines). Denoising algorithms and methods to reduce the dose/number of projections will also be tested and implemented. The candidate is expected to play a key role in proposing new data processing routes in close collaboration with the Soleil data analysis group (GRADES). Computing resources at Soleil will be leveraged to train and deploy algorithms in a way that users can utilize them during their beamtime.

Experience required

The candidate should hold a PhD in mechanics of materials / physics applied to material science or equivalent and have experience in tomography imaging. He/She should have a strong experience in using and developing machine learning algorithms for data processing and be proficient with Python. The candidate must also be able to work in English as the synchrotron is an international environment. The candidate will join an enthusiastic and growing pluri-disciplinary team, benefiting from multiple national and international partnerships. In summary, we’re looking for someone curious and talented, dynamic and autonomous, who is not afraid to learn new things and who enjoys working in a team.

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