The fellowship, sponsored by the Computational Research and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center divisions at Berkeley Lab, was established to encourage the development and
application of tools to advance scientific research. The fellowship enables a recent graduate with a Ph.D. (or equivalent) to acquire further scientific training and to develop professional maturity for independent research. Applicants must be recent graduates (within the past four years) with a strong emphasis on computing or computational science.
The Alvarez Fellowship is offered as a one-year term appointment with the possibility of a one-year renewal. The successful applicant will be compensated with a competitive salary and excellent benefits. Additionally, the successful candidate will have access to the NERSC
Center's high-performance computing resources. The successful applicant is expected to be involved in one of the areas that currently have post-doctoral openings, and will be assigned a scientific mentor.
Applications are due by March 3, 2003, for an appointment to coincide with the coming academic year. Interested applicants should submit a letter of application, resume and three letters of reference by e-mail to AlvarezFellowship@lbl.gov or by standard mail to:
Luis W. Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellowship
Job #ZFPA
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1 Cyclotron Road, MS 50B-4230
Berkeley, CA 94720
The fellowship is named for Dr. Luis W. Alvarez, the Nobel Laureate and physicist who worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In the 1950s, Alvarez opened a new era in high-energy physics research with his proposal to build a pressurised chamber filled with liquid hydrogen.
Known as a "bubble chamber", this device would allow scientists to discover new particles and analyse their behaviour. In his 1955 prospectus for such an experimental facility, Alvarez became one of the first scientists to propose using computing devices for analysing
experimental data, even before such computers were actually available.
By the 1960s, Alvarez' vision was reality. His colleagues at Berkeley Lab were using computers to track some 1.5 million particle physics events annually and developed scientific computing techniques which were adopted by researchers around the world. This effort led to Alvarez
receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968.
For more information on the Luis W. Alvarez Post-Doctoral Fellowship, please refer to http://www.nersc.gov/research/alvarez.html.
For more information about additional opportunities in Computing Sciences, please visit the web site at http://www.lbl.gov/CS/Careers.