Postdoctoral Researcher in Particle Physics

Organisation/Company CNRS Department Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien Research Field Physics Researcher Profile Recognised Researcher (R2) Application Deadline 30 Oct 2026
- 23:59 (UTC) Country France Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 35 Offer Starting Date 1 Dec 2026 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

The PICSEL team at IPHC (Strasbourg, France) invites applications for a postdoctoral position focused on the development of a novel vertex detector concept for FCC-ee. The successful candidate will contribute to detector prototype testing, detector simulation and optimization, and the evaluation of detector performance in the context of physics analyses.
FCC-ee has emerged as the preferred option for the next collider at CERN. Designed as a high-luminosity, high-precision electron–positron collider, FCC-ee will provide unprecedented experimental sensitivity and push the boundaries of our knowledge across a broad range of topics in particle physics, from precision studies of the Higgs and electroweak sectors to flavor and top-quark physics, as well as searches for phenomena beyond the Standard Model.
Fully exploiting the unprecedented capabilities of FCC-ee will require a new generation of particle detectors combining high precision with high efficiency. In particular, the innermost tracking system—the vertex detector—will rely on advanced silicon sensor technologies to reconstruct charged-particle trajectories with the highest possible spatial resolution and particle detection efficiency. Achieving these ambitious performance goals requires the development of innovative silicon sensors and detector concepts that minimize the amount of material traversed by particles. These technological developments are essential to achieve the outstanding tracking and vertexing performance required by the FCC-ee physics program.
The FCC-SEED vertex detector concept is based on curved silicon sensors, with the aim of positioning the first measurement layers of charged-particle trajectories as close as possible to the interaction point. The detector geometry is therefore designed to closely follow the shape of the beam pipe, minimizing the distance to the primary vertex and then improving the trajectory resolutions.
The candidate will initially be strongly involved in the characterization and testing of curved Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS), in particular curved MIMOSIS sensors. Thanks to her/his experience, she/he will take a central role in the preparation of test-beam campaigns, participate in data taking, and contribute to the subsequent data analysis and interpretation of the results.
The successful candidate will also play a leading role in detector simulation and performance studies. She/he will contribute to the implementation of FCC-SEED detector geometries in the Key4hep full-simulation framework and to the characterization of the detector performance through tracking, flavor-tagging, and physics-analysis studies. She/he will carry out detector optimization studies, investigating different geometrical and technological configurations to achieve the best possible physics performance. To qualify the physics performance, it is foreseen to perform physics analyses related to CKM matrix elements measurements, flavor physics or top quark physics.
The successful candidate will work in close collaboration with experienced physicists, engineers, and technicians at IPHC, while taking a leading role in the activities described above. They will also contribute to the broader FCC-ee detector R&D community, participate in international conferences, workshops, and collaboration meetings, and contribute to the preparation of scientific publications presenting the results of their work.

• Perform lab tests of curved silicon sensors, possible with a source,
• Prepare test beam campaign, participate to the data taking and related analysis
• Write publications on curved sensor measurements,
• Implement changes of FCC-SEED geometries into the existing full simulation,
• Perform single particle simulations as well as physics simulation to estimate the performance of tracking, flavor tagging,
• Perform physics analysis on CKM matrix elements measurements, flavor physics or top quark physics. Participate in the writing of the corresponding publications.

The IPHC, a joint research unit under the co-supervision of CNRS and Strasbourg University (UMR7178), is a multidisciplinary laboratory where research groups from various scientific fields (ecology, physiology and ethology, chemistry and subatomic physics) develop high level research program with a strong instrumentation basement. IPHC is composed of 4 departments and counts a total number of 393 ag