Diamond Light Source is the UK’s national synchrotron science facility. Located on the Harwell Science & Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire a 20 minute drive south of Oxford in a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Diamond Light Source conducts world-class research in virtually all fields of science and offers rewarding career opportunities covering both technical and scientific disciplines.

The detector group is in charge of the construction, installation, commissioning, and operation of the detector systems of the beamlines of Diamond. In order to provide the best detectors to the forthcoming beamlines the group is committed to a number of detector evaluation and development projects.

The successful candidate will join a highly dynamic group working at the cutting edge of detector technology. He/She will be in charge of the characterization and simulation of a number of pixel detectors ranging from hybrid detectors for time resolved experiments and high energy diffraction experiments to monolithic detectors for soft X-ray.

The detector group has been engaged for a few years in the development of semiconductor pixel detectors. The expertise in the detector group is sufficiently established to engineer several systems that can be applied to high energy diffraction experiments, time resolved experiments, soft X-ray experiments. 

A post doctoral research assistant is required to carry out the characterization and simulations of the detector systems to be installed. This is necessary for the validation of the data provided by the detector systems and for understanding the characteristics that can lead to further improvements of the detector systems.

Detector characterization including but not limited to:

• Test and characterization of Medipix3 assemblies with GaAs for high energy diffraction experiments;
• Test and characterization of Timepix3 for time resolved experiments;
• Test and characterization of Percival sensors for soft X-ray diffraction;
• Test and characterization of high spatial resolution semiconductor detectors for the RIXS beam line.

Detector simulation including but not limited to:

• Monte Carlo calculations using Geant4;
• Semiconductor transport models using Comsol. 

• Appropriate First Degree;
• Appropriate Postgraduate degree;
• Appropriate PhD degree or equivalent qualification or experience;
• Demonstrated background in ionizing radiation detectors;
• Knowledge of the principles of the interaction of the radiation with the matter;
• Experience in development and characterization of ionizing radiation detectors;
• Ability and initiative to get to the heart of the problem and take it effectively through to completion;
• Good interpersonal, communication and presentational skills;
• Ability to interact effectively with staff at all levels;
• Ability to work as part of a multi-disciplinary team;
• Self motivated.

• Working experience at synchrotrons;
• Experience in semiconductor pixel detectors;
• Experience in using Monte Carlo codes for the simulation of the interaction of radiation with matter (e.g. GEANT4, EGS4);
• Experience in using transport codes in semiconductors;
• C/C++ programming;
• Linux .