VU University Amsterdam is one of the leading institutions for higher education in Europe and aims to be inspiring, innovative, and committed to societal welfare. It comprises twelve faculties and has teaching facilities for 25,000 students.
The Geology and Geochemistry (GG) Cluster of the Department of Earth Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, is offering a four-year PhD studentship focused on providing new constraints on the structure and evolution of the crust of Mars. Within the GG cluster, researchers work on numerous topics including mantle petrology, carbonate sedimentology, geochemistry, geochronology, and planetary science. Planetary evolution is a major research focus of the planetary science team. The studentship is fully funded by a NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) User Support Programme Space Research grant. Within this international project you will collaborate with researchers at University of Lyon, the University of Toulouse and at the IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe) in Paris, France.
Tasks
You will combine experimental petrology approaches with recent remote sensing datasets (e.g., imagery, altimetry, spectroscopy, etc.) and new generation geophysical models to provide estimates on the thickness, structure and composition of the Martian crust and study the composition and structure of the earliest formed crust. Resolving the nature of Mars crust has been identified as one of the major key questions to understand the formation and early evolution of Mars, and would aid our understanding of questions related to Mars chemical composition, its differentiation and magma ocean phase, and its subsequent evolution.
Deadline for applications is September 30, 2015.