PhD Student Position in Black Hole Imaging and ngEHT Science

IAA-CSIC and the CfA jointly offer a fully funded PhD position within the CSIC JAE-Chair program. The successful candidate will join the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and next-generation EHT (ngEHT) collaboration, working towards the first time-resolved movies of supermassive black holes and on multi-frequency, full-polarization VLBI imaging.

Following the EHT images of M87* and Sgr A*, the ngEHT program is expanding the global VLBI array in sensitivity, frequency coverage and temporal sampling. A central component of this effort is the Teide Event-horizon Antenna (TEA) in the Canary Islands, developed jointly by IAA-CSIC, CfA, and IAC. The thesis will contribute through:

- Development and application of advanced dynamic VLBI imaging algorithms, including neural-network-based approaches
- Multi-frequency and polarimetric imaging of black hole environments
- Reconstruction of time-dependent accretion flows in SgrA*
- Study of jet launching and horizon-scale dynamics in M87*
- Investigation of black hole growth and relativistic jet physics across cosmic time

The student will be jointly supervised by Dr. José L. Gómez (IAA-CSIC) and Dr. Sheperd S. Doeleman (CfA), with structured research periods at both institutions, and will be fully integrated into the international EHT/ngEHT collaboration.

Requirements: Applicants must hold, or be about to complete, a university degree in physics, astronomy, astrophysics or a related field that qualifies them for admission to doctoral studies; have a strong background in astrophysics and/or computational physics; and show strong motivation for research in black hole physics and interferometric imaging. Prior experience with VLBI, machine learning or related computational methods is an asset.

Doctoral enrollment: Formal admission to a doctoral program, normally at the University of Granada, is required before the contract can be signed. Applicants who have not yet applied, or whose admission is still in progress, are very welcome and are encouraged to contact us early.

Conditions: Competitive PhD salary according to Spanish national standards, full social security coverage, funding for international travel and research visits, and access to high-performance computing facilities.

How to apply: Send a CV, a motivation letter of at most 2 pages, academic transcripts and contact details for at least two referees to jlgomez@iaa.es and sdoeleman@cfa.harvard.edu.