ITARS, a Marie Curie project: an opportunity of European research career for Italian and foreign young researchers at the CIAO, the atmospheric observatory of CNR-IMAA
Young researchers are essential for the future of Europe, but embarking on a research career is not always a simple task. EU offers to early stage (PhD) and expert young researchers, through Marie Curie Actions, some tools addressed to improve their research skills, join further research groups and increase career perspectives. These tools are represented by the Initial Training Networks (ITN), that allow to select young researchers all over the world. The selected people are generally required to undertake transnational mobility (i.e. moving to a different country).

Also CNR-IMAA is involved in these actions through ITARS (Initial Training for Atmospheric Remote Sensing) project, that will offer to one early stage researcher (PhD) and to one young expert researcher the opportunity to carry out specific research projects and to be trained at the CIAO atmospheric observatory of the CNR-IMAA, and to exploit the research training program offered by a network of excellences. At the same time, Italian early stage or expert young researchers will benefit from the same opportunity, spending the supported period at one of the European partners.

ITARS is a 4-year (1 April 2012 - 31 March 2016) interdisciplinary EU project in the frame of FP7-PEOPLE-2011-ITN (Marie Curie Actions ). ITARS brings together a group of universities, research organizations and high-tech companies from different disciplines (meteorology, geosciences, physics, electrical engineering, mathematics) with the aim to foster training and further development in the area of remote sensing of the atmosphere. The last years have brought a rapid development in instrumental techniques (lidar, radar, radiometry) that have great potential to monitor atmospheric composition and dynamics in unprecedented detail. Such instrumentation is urgently needed to address important topics related to climate change, numerical weather forecasting, and atmospheric pollution. Most prominently aerosol-cloud interaction as the single largest uncertainty in current climate projections requires the exploitation of emerging observational techniques to improve the parameterisation of aerosol and cloud processes in atmospheric models. Because todays curricula do not reflect these issues, ITARS aims:

• To impart an in-depth understanding of instrumentation and algorithms needed to retrieve geophysical quantities and atmospheric applications;
• To foster the synergy of different sensors by bringing together experts from the individual techniques;
• To develop and implement pan-European courses on atmospheric remote sensing by exploiting new web-based techniques;
• To close the gap between the specialized development of single instruments and atmospheric applications by training a new generation of scientists in academia and the private sector

Job opportunities

Applications are invited for 4 Experienced Researcher (post-doc or equivalent research experience) positions with opportunities in 4 European countries.

The research projects will focus on high-end ground-based remote-sensing instrumentation, synergistic observations and/or mathematical methods.

Offered opportunities:

• research      and training in an exciting European network;
• a      2-year fixed-term contract with a highly competitive gross monthly      allowance ranging from €3933 to €6277, depending on host country and      family status;
• secondments      to industrial partners;
• and      excellent career-development opportunities.

Excellent candidates are sought with 4‐5 years of research experience and a PhD or Master in

Meteorology, (Atmospheric) Physics, Mathematics, Engineering or Geosciences.

Deadline for applications is 28 February 2013, employment will start from June onward.

More details, available positions, prerequisites and application procedure and research projects can be found at http://www.itars.net or http://www.ciao.imaa.cnr.it.