Some background information
The Department of Physics and Astronomy is currently advertising for four continuing academic staff positions. This page describes a little about these positions, a little about the department and some of the qualities that we trust we will find in the applicants.
The University of Canterbury (UC) was established in 1873. By 1973 UC was a university that covered essentially all disciplines except medicine, with our Department (Physics and Astronomy, P&A) at its current size of twenty-something academic staff and similar numbers of technical staff. P&A offers 3-year BSc degrees in physics, astronomy and electronics and 4-year BSc(Hons), MSc and PhD degrees in physics, astronomy, mathematical physics and medical physics. We have a strong teaching and research connection with other departments, particularly with the chemistry, mathematics and the engineering departments. We teach a quarter of the first year (the intermediate year) of the 4-year BE(Hons).
Professor/Associate Professor (Nanotechnology)
Simon Brown, Roger Reeves and Mike Reid are members of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. This centre for research excellence is hosted jointly by Victoria University of Wellington and UC and was established with some $10M worth of equipment. The UC Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Chemistry are also members. It is expected that the new associate professor/professor of nanotechnology will assist us to take the opportunities available and grow this area considerably.
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer (Medical Physics)
UC has a long history of research in medical imaging, in prosthetic development and in radiation therapy. The UC Bioengineering Centre, Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, and the Van der Veer Institute are active in many areas. Christchurch hosts a strong hospital department of medical physics and bioengineering, and is home to the National Radiation Laboratory and the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences of Otago University. The expansion of radiation therapy and of new imaging modalities has meant that the Department has joined with the hospital system and the Australasian College of Physical Sciences and Engineers in Medicine (ACPSEM) in developing a medical registrar programme consisting of an MSc in Medical Physics and three clinical years in accredited hospitals around New Zealand. We are seeking a lecturer/senior lecturer in medical physics with particular expertise in radiation physics in order to help grow this area and to meet the demand for New Zealand and foreign medical physicists. The successful candidate would complement current medical physics work in the department, which includes laser applications (Phil Butler, Lou Reinisch) and MRI (Richard Watts).
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer (Laser Physics / Interferometry)
Professor Geoff Stedman (now partially retired) and his team have proven that it is possible to build very large ring lasers. Part of his original motivation was to seek new tests of QED and parity. However, as every larger ring lasers have been built, the most recent to 20 metres by 40 metres, many other applications have become apparent. The Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodäsie (FESG) der Technischen Universität München, Germany has supported the project to well in excess of $NZ20 million as part of their field station in Wettzell, Bavaria. Their particular interest relates to the relationship between a terrestial and a celestial reference frame, accessible by GPS, VLBI (very long baseline interferometry) and SLR/LLR (satellite and lunar laser ranging). The transformation between these reference frames allows us to study the motion of the Earth’s crust and geophysical processes in the Earth’s interior. Ring Lasers as inertial sensors have direct access to the mechanisms of global and regional perturbations of Earth rotation. The Civil Engineering Department at UC and the Crown Research Institute IGNS are interested in the ring laser as a tool for measuring earthquakes and the responses of man-made structures to rotational displacements. Current ring lasers have rotational sensitivities of nano-radians with stability times from seconds to weeks. The Department is seeking someone who can exploit some of the many opportunities of these very novel, highly accurate sensors. There are problems in relating to quantum noise, issues to do with geodesy and geophysics and even the suggestion that the next generation of ring lasers may be the first device to measure gravitational waves.
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer (Mathematical Physics or High Energy Physics)
We offer, along with our Mathematics and Statistics Department, New Zealand’s only BSc(Hons) and PhD programmes in mathematical physics and we are seeking the appropriate lecturer/senior lecturer who will add to our strengths in mathematical physics and/or high energy physics. Current work in these areas includes Gravitational Physics ( David Wiltshire), Theoretical Cosmology ( David Wiltshire, Jenni Adams), Collaborations with the RICE and ICECUBE neutrino experiments (Jenni Adams), collaborations with CERN (Phil Butler), and Mathematical Physics and Group Theory (Phil Butler, Mike Reid).
Further information
New Zealand is a long thin country with a latitude range of that from the Canadian to the Mexican borders of the USA. Many undergraduate students therefore choose their nearest university although UC has always attracted some of the strongest physical science, mathematical and engineering-oriented students. We currently have some 50 PhD/MSc thesis students in the department and amongst them are some with a strong mathematical physics bent.
For those who are thinking of applying for one of our four current vacancies please explore our web sites and look at some of the various research interests of our existing staff and the current research projects being carried out by our thesis students. Our human resources website contains the four formal advertisements and position descriptions, as well as links to elsewhere in the University and links to information about living in Christchurch and living in New Zealand. I would suggest that you contact the Departmental Administrator, Rhondda Sullivan, and staff in the area of your interest prior to formally submitting your application. In the weeks following the closing date of 17 October, we will communicate further with several candidates with the expectation that we will bring two or more short-listed candidates for each position to visit the Department so that we may get to know each other better before we make decisions. It should be noted that the positions are “continuing” which means that they are equivalent to tenured positions (not tenure track) in the US. While an appointee can start as early as January 1, 2006, it is not expected that all four decisions will be made by then, and furthermore it is expected that at least some appointees will not be able to start until the end of the northern hemisphere academic year.
Phil Butler
Head of Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Canterbury