3 Fully Funded Phd Positions On

The universities of Bern and Lausanne as well as the federal aquatic research center Eawag are looking for:
3 fully funded PhD Positions on Climate-Geosphere-Biosphere Interactions

The positions are embedded within a Swiss NSF-funded Sinergia collaborative research project with partners in Switzerland, Germany and Sweden entitled:
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- (DIGESTED): An interdisciplinary approach to interpret a Myr climate record from Lake Nam Co (Tibetan Plateau)’._
- The grant supports three PhD positions for up to 4 years based at the universities of Bern and Lausanne and at the EAWAG federal aquatic research center (in addition to a senior scientist, two postdoctoral researchers and technical staff)

From a scientific perspective DIGESTED aims to explore and interpret biological and mineral signatures and their respective evolution in the sediments of Nam Co, Tibet. Specifically, the project aims to:

- Elucidate how ongoing microbial activity and diagenesis alter ancient sediment deposits
- Correlate sedimentary structures as well as solid and fluid geochemistry with the diversity and activity of microbial communities within the sediment column
- Discriminate between the influence of environmental conditions and diagenetic overprinting by microbial and tectonic activity on mineral
- and isotope-based reconstructions
- Generate more robust interpretations of the past climate and environmental conditions of the Tibetan Plateau.

This interdisciplinary approach will shed light into mineralization processes impacted by terrigenic fluid emanation and will broaden our understanding of the genetic diversity and activity of the deep biosphere driving the cycling of carbon and other elements in the deep subsurface.
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**PhD position in noble-gas-geochemistry-based environmental reconstructions**
- Noble gases are powerful isotope-geochemical tools to analyse water renewal and (deep) water exchange in groundwater and lakes, to reconstruct past environmental condition from porewaters in lacustrine sediments and to identify the origin of (non-atmospheric) terrestrial fluids. Transient tracer investigations targeting deep water exchange in the recent Lake Nam Co and the porewater evolution will be conducted to reconstruct the abiotic environmental conditions that constrain the diagenetic processes in the (deep) sediments and the (long-term) microbiological evolution.

For further information on this position please contact Prof. Dr Rolf Kipfer.

**PhD position in geobiology/biomineralization**
- This PhD project will be hosted by the Sedimentary Geochemistry research group at the University of Bern and targets the identification of biological signatures in minerals through characterization - from a structural and (isotope-)geochemical compositional perspective - of diagenetic mineral phases and their associated sedimentary environments. This information will be contextualized against information generated by DIGESTED team members on the environmental parameters at the time of sediment deposition as well as the in situ microbial and chemical composition at the time of core retrieval. Together these data will inform on the factors influencing paleoclimate proxies and will be integrated within the broader scope of the NamCore international collaboration. Field work in high altitude (Tibetan Plateau; 4700 m asl) and participation to international workshops and conferences is to be expected.

For further information on this position please contact Prof. Hendrik Vogel.

**PhD position in microbiology of extreme environments**

For further information on this position please contact Jasmine Berg.
Applications will only be accepted through the website.