GFZ is Germany's national centre for solid Earth research. We advance the understanding of dynamic processes to address global challenges, from mitigating the impacts of natural hazards and sustaining our habitat amid global change to responsibly managing georesources. We are part of the Helmholtz Association, the largest German scientific organisation. With around 1,200 employees as well as ca. 500 guest researchers, we contribute to the Helmholtz Research Field Earth and Environment, aligning cutting-edge research with societal relevance and international collaboration. Our work integrates multidisciplinary studies across Earth's system components, leveraging advanced technologies and infrastructure to research solutions and to transfer our knowledge to society. We are doing this according to our vision: "Taking the pulse of our Earth to safeguard a habitable planet”.

Reference Number 10624

– The position is dependent on the approval of the project. –

This position is part of the RESET project, where we investigate the impacts of Enhanced Weathering on soil organic carbon, develop inorganic geochemical proxies, and identify social and governance pathways towards large-scale deployment, in three interlinked PhD positions.

Enhanced Silicate Weathering (ESW) promises to achieve large volume CO2 removal (CDR) with millennium-scale storage and at competitive cost by distributing finely ground reactive (ultra)mafic minerals on agricultural soils. Within the framework of the BMFTR-funded consortium CDRTerra, our project (RESET: Developing Roadmaps to Scalable Carbon Dioxide Removal by Enhanced Silicate Weathering) seeks to identify the potential and challenges of the large-scale deployment of ESW for durable CO2 removal.

We are looking for a motivated PhD student to lead the inorganic geochemical aspects of the project, which will include processing and interpreting metal concentrations and isotope ratios from experiments and field deployments. You will also work closely with organic geochemists and social scientists to gain a holistic view of the impacts and potential of ESW and CDR in general.

Your responsibilities:

• Generating high-quality inorganic geochemical data via clean room processing and purification of samples, and analysis by (multi-collector) ICP-MS
• Integrating results into geochemical mass-balance frameworks
• Staying up-to-date on scientific literature in the field of (Enhanced) Weathering
• Planning and conducting fieldwork within Germany
• Preparation and publication of manuscripts detailing results in appropriate peer-reviewed journals; data management and archiving according to FAIR principles; presentation of results at national and international conferences

Your qualifications:

• MSc in a geoscience-relevant field, and curiosity and desire to become an expert in CO2 removal techniques
• Strong numerical skills and ideally experience with a scientific programming language (e.g. Python, Matlab, etc).
• Fluency in written and spoken English; German is an advantage, but not required
• Past experience with one or more of the relevant topics (e.g. CDR, weathering or enhanced weathering, isotope geochemistry, etc.) and/or techniques (clean-laboratory work, isotope ratio measurements, geochemical mass-balance, etc.) is a distinct advantage

What we offer:

• Ambitious and varied tasks in a dynamic and international research environment
• State-of-the-art equipment
• Public service benefits
• Extensive training opportunities
• Professional career advice offered by our in-house Career-Centre
• Flexible working hours and conditions
• Support with finding a good work-life balance offered by benefit@work
• Institute day-care centre on site
• Working at the Albert Einstein science park on the Telegrafenberg in Potsdam
• Work place within walking distance of Potsdam main train station, or just a short ride on the shuttle bus