April 2019

A PhD position in an Innovative Training Network (ITN) on Managed Recharge, an EU funded Marie Curie Grant

We seek for a PhD candidate at the lab at the Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), Volcani Center, - Dr. Daniel Kurtzman. The research will be conducted with collaboration with Dr. Avinoam Rabinovich and Prof. Emeritus Gedeon Dagan of the Faculty of Engineering, (TAU), from which the candidate will pursue a PhD degree. Mekorot, the national water company of Israel will cooperate as well. The successful candidate will be part of the ITN titled MASoluT focusing Managed Aquifer Recharge: 12 candidates working on their PhD in research groups that are experienced in different aspects of Managed Aquifer Recharge, at various European countries (details at https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/403193 and https://www.marsolut-itn.eu/). Therefore, the candidate should follow the EU ITN requirements. Namely, he/she must not have resided or carried out his/her main activity (work, studies, etc) in Israel for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to his/her recruitment. Short stays, such as holidays, are not taken into account. She/he shall - at the date of recruitment by the host organization - be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and have not been awarded a doctoral degree.

In the last 5 years managed aquifer recharge of excesses desalinated seawater is performed through infiltration ponds. While the fast flow and transport (days-weeks) from ground-surface to the shallow parts of the aquifer was recently studied (Ganot et al., 2017, Ganot et al., 2018), the long term (years) flow and transport from the shallow part of aquifer under the infiltration ponds to well’s perforations is much less known. The lack of magnesium in the desalinated water is a concern, therefore, quantifying the enrichment of the desalinated water with it during flow in the aquifer will be perused. The research work will consist mainly of constructing and running numerical simulations and developing mathematical models of reactive mixing constrained to field data using a probabilistic approach. Some field and laboratory work may be required.

Candidates should have:  An MSc. degree in one of the following areas: engineering, hydrology, geophysics, geochemistry, physics.  Strong capabilities in computational methods and modeling of geophysical processes  Background in groundwater hydrology, probability theory and geostatistics  Enthusiasm to find solutions for water problems  Excellent English

Candidates should apply officially through the MARSoluT system coordinated by the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. The PhD research that will be carried out at ARO, Israel is ESR11 project:

How to apply: For application, please download and complete the application form and send it, together with all relevant documents as mentioned on the form, to: Dr. Annette Wefer-Roehl, [email protected] darmstadt.de

Application deadline: 31.05.2019

Candidates should also E-mail their CV, copy of university diplomas, list of courses and grades, peer-reviewed publications they authored/co-authored and MSc thesis (title and abstract only) to [email protected]

The expected time of start of the work is September –October 2019.

References

Ganot, Y., R. Holtzman, N. Weisbrod, I. Nitzan, Y. Katz, and D. Kurtzman. 2017. Monitoring and modeling infiltration-recharge dynamics of managed aquifer recharge with desalinated seawater, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 4479-4493.

Ganot, Y., Holtzman, R., Weisbrod, N.,Russak, A., Katz, Y., & Kurtzman, D. 2018. Geochemical processes during managed aquifer recharge with desalinated seawater. Water Resources Research, 54. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017WR021798