Postdoctoral Research Associate in Transient Astrophysics

School Of Physics And Astronomy

Location

Bailrigg, Lancaster, UK

Salary

£39,906 to £46,049 (Full-Time/Indefinite with End Date)

Closing Date

Friday 06 November 2026

Interview Date

Friday 04 December 2026

Reference

1075-26

Lancaster University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, together with the University of Oxford, the University of Southampton, and Queen’s University Belfast, is seeking to appoint one Postdoctoral Research Associate in Transient Astrophysics at each institution as part of the five-year STFC Large Award “TRANSCEND”. TRANSCEND is a collaboration between Lancaster University, Universities of Oxford and Southampton, and Queen’s University Belfast that will use Vera Rubin/LSST transient data and the 4MOST Time-Domain Extragalactic Survey (TiDES) to address pressing questions in modern astrophysics: how stars explode and drive chemical enrichment, how supermassive black holes grow, and the true nature of dark energy. Each Postdoctoral Research Associate will lead one of the following areas:

• Simulations and selection effects for SN Ia cosmology and beyond (Lancaster University): lead the forward-modelling of the combined LSST+TiDES sample, and characterise its associated sample selection effects. This project will include building galaxy population catalogues validated against state-of-the-art cosmological simulations (e.g. IllustrisTNG). This simulation effort will be the foundation underpinning every rate, host-galaxy and cosmological result in TRANSCEND.
• SNe Ia cosmology groundwork or rare transient follow-up and characterisation (University of Oxford): use over 30,000 spectroscopically confirmed SNe Ia and 150,000 host-galaxy redshifts to improve SNe Ia standardisation and lay the groundwork for using this sample in future SN cosmological measurements. Alternatively, focus on follow-up and modelling of rare transients.
• Host galaxies of transients (University of Southampton): derive host-galaxy properties from LSST+TiDES photometric and spectroscopic data, and use the unprecedented LSST+TiDES transient sample to study how transients correlate with their environments and measure rates of different classes of transient.
• Transient physical properties and the black hole mass function of tidal disruption events (Queen’s University Belfast): measure key parameters such as luminosity and nickel masses for thousands of transients from TiDES and follow-up data to characterise population demographics, and use hundreds of live TDEs and thousands of host galaxies to derive scaling relations and occupation fractions for SMBHs.