Call for applications to doctoral program 2021A in UST-KASI

Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) via the University of Science and Technology (UST) is offering doctoral scholarships (direct and integrated) starting from March 2021. PhD scholarships are provided with a competitive salary of about $1500-$2000 per month. KASI is located in Daejeon, a high tech, educational and research oriented city. Convenient accommodation would be provided to students for the first 3 years in the campus.

KASI is actively involved in various fields of astronomy and astrophysics, from astronomical instrumentation to observation and theory, and participates in international collaborative and stand-alone projects including GMT, ALMA, SDSS4, DESI, LSST, KMTNet, and KVN. This semester KASI is accepting applications for the following research areas:

  •  Solar Physics  (supervisor:  Prof.  Kyung-Suk Cho,  kscho@kasi.re.kr)

  •  Cosmology  (supervisor:  Prof.  Arman Shafieloo,  shafieloo@kasi.re.kr)

  •  Theoretical Astrophysics (supervisor:  Prof.  Thiem Hoang,  thiemhoang@kasi.re.kr)

  •  Ionospheric Research (supervisor: Prof. Young-Sil Kwak, yskwak@kasi.re.kr)

and for the detailed description of the specific research topics, see the list attached or in our major homepage  (https://kasi.re.kr/eng/pageView/140).

We encourage qualified international students to apply. Competent students with BSc degrees can apply for an integrated PhD program. Students with MSc degrees may apply directly to the PhD program.

Questions on each research area should be sent to each assigned professor, while other questions are sent to the Chief Major Professor (Sang-Sung Lee, sslee@kasi.re.kr).  For more information of application, also see the UST web page  (https://ust.ac.kr/admission_eng.do).  Applications are considered only if they are submitted during August 17 to September 18 (17:00 KST).

Best regards,

 Sang-Sung Lee 

Chief  Major  Professor

1. Prof.  Kyung-Suk Cho  (kscho@kasi.re.kr)

Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) has been developing a next-generation coronagraph (NGC) in cooperation with NASA to measure the coronal electron density, temperature, and speed simultaneously using four different filters around 400 nm. The project is expected to provide science data to the international solar community from 2023. Through integrated-course program of UST, I would like to select and educate a new student from other country, especially developing country, and contribute international community. The student will use world level new science data for solving long-lasting question about the coronal heating and solar wind acceleration.

2. Prof.  Arman Shafieloo (shafieloo@kasi.re.kr)

We are looking for competent and enthusiastic PhD candidates to work on physical cosmology. A successful candidate will become officially involved with SDSS-IV (Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Stage 4), DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) and LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) surveys and the project will include studying and performing research on different aspects of physical cosmology such as testing early universe  scenarios and studying dark energy using large scale structure and other cosmological data. Developing advanced statistical methods of data analysis (data mining, machine learning, regression approaches) might be a major part of the research during the PhD project or integrated-PhD.

3. Prof.  Thiem Hoang (thiemhoang@kasi.re.kr)

Project Title: Theoretical and Computational Astrophysics

Program: Integrated – Ph.D.

We are looking for outstanding and strongly motivated candidate for an integrated-Ph.D position in Theoretical Astrophysics group under supervision of Prof. Thiem Hoang. The successfull candidate will research on the interaction of intense radiation sources with their surrounding environments. The candidate will work on the formulation of new theory for extremely powerful radiation-dust interaction, development of numerical tools, and application to interpret multi-wavelength observational data by ALMA and upcoming unprecedented powerful telescopes such as GMT, JWST, LSST, and WFIRST. An important goal of this project is to clarify the effects of young stars and transients onto the physical and chemical properties of the surrounding environments and use observational data to probe the extragalactic environments which are inaccessible with other

tracers. Students will be trained to master a wide range of research skills, including analytical and theoretical ability, numerical modeling and computational simulations. 

4. Prof.  Young-Sil Kwak (yskwak@kasi.re.kr)

In Space Science Division, we are looking for an integrated-PhD student in the area of ionospheric research using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data. A successful candidate will be involved in the project developing a near real-time ionospheric monitoring system using GNSS data. Dissertation research will focus on the analysis of ionospheric variation using ground/ space-born GNSS observations and predicting the ionosphere using a deep learning or machine learning approach. The student will work closely with a team of experts from the area of GNSS applications and ionospheric research to learn the data processing and analysis of the results.