PhD student in „Establishing a firn emulator for future Greenland simulations“

Bereich: Department of Geosciences

The University of Fribourg is located in central western Switzerland, at the foothills of the Swiss Alps. The university has about 10’000 students across all scientific disciplines. Being part of the Faculty of Science and Medicine, the Department of Geosciences comprises approximately 90 employees and offers BSc and MSc programs in Earth sciences, in geosciences and geography.
The Cryosphere group within the Department of Geosciences has a staff of c. 25 and has strong expertise in surface and subsurface processes of glaciers and ice sheets, permafrost and geophysics. The Cryosphere group is looking for a PhD student in „Establishing a firn emulator for future Greenland simulations“
This 4-year PhD position is part of the FirnMelt Synergy Grant, funded by the European Research Council (ERC). FirnMelt is a collaboration between University of Fribourg (Horst Machguth), the Alfred Wegener Institut AWI (Angelika Humbert), University of Utrecht (Michiel van den Broeke) and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland GEUS (William Colgan). The core team consists of the 4 PIs, a scientific coordinator, around 15 early career researchers as well as technical staff and aims to quantify the impact of Greenland’s changing firn cover on the entire ice sheet.
The goal of this PhD position is to develop an emulator of firn hydrology capable of representing lateral water flow within anisotropic firn. The design of the emulator, particularly the loss functions, will be informed by already existing firn hydrology datasets within the consortium and then formally trained with the large-scale firn simulations within the project. This approach will emulate the complex physical processes involved in firn hydrology. Eventually, the firn emulator should provide runoff for coupled Greenland simulation until the year 2300. Challenges to be addressed and explored will include suitability and quality of input data and the emulation of not only firn structure but also firn hydrology and related meltwater discharge, The position will be supervised by H. Machguth and co-supervised by M. van den Broeke and A. Humbert.
This may be the perfect position for you if you have a master’s degree in engineering, physics, mathematics, statistics or a related field, you are interested in the cryosphere, you have experience in computational data analysis and modelling, and if you are eager to participate in Greenland fieldwork. Very good verbal and written communication skills in English are required; French or German is an asset.
If you are interested, please send your application (merged into one PDF file), including (1) motivation letter, (2) CV (including list of publication, if applicable) with contact details of at least two references, and (3) educational transcripts directly to Horst Machguth by Mail . The optimal starting date for the PhD candidate is towards the end of 2026 and assessment of applications will start 14 September 2026. Please contact Horst Machguth by Mail if you have questions.