Postdoctoral Fellowship, Hyperpolarization in Quantitative NMR and Quantum

at  National Research Council Canada

PRIORITY WILL BE GIVEN TO THE FOLLOWING DESIGNATED EMPLOYMENT EQUITY GROUPS: WOMEN, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES* (FIRST NATIONS, INUIT AND MÉTIS), PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES AND RACIALIZED PERSONS*.

• The Employment Equity Act, which is under review, uses the terminology Aboriginal peoples and visible minorities.
  Candidates are asked to self-declare when applying to this hiring process.
  City: Ottawa
  Organizational Unit: Metrology Research Centre
  Classification: RO
  Tenure: Term
  Duration: 2 years
  Language Requirements: English
  Note: Due to the nature of the work and operational requirements, this position will require full-time physical presence at the NRC work location identified.

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, or closely related field.
For information on certificates and diplomas issued abroad, please see Degree equivalency

EXPERIENCE

• Experience with developing and employing advanced NMR techniques, including pulse sequence development, multi-nuclear and multi-dimensional experiments; and
• Prior experience in hyperpolarization techniques is highly desirable.

LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS

English
Information on language requirements and self-assessment tests

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

In order to be considered for the program please include the following in your application, please note that you will need to attach the required documents as per the list below when submitting your application. Failure to do so will result in your application being excluded from searches.

• Resume
• Statement of Interest in the project (maximum one page in length)
• PhD Transcript - an electronic copy is sufficient, it does not have to be an official version.
• List of Publications

When submitting your application you can include the required documents in any attachment field such as «Second language evaluation results» or «Other attachments»
In addition, applicants who best meet the requirements of the position will be asked to provide three letters of recommendation at a later stage of the competition process.

THE ROLE

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is an indispensable tool in chemistry, biochemistry, medicine, pharmaceutical, food, polymer and material science. It enables identification, structure determination, the study of dynamics, and quantification of small- to macromolecules. However, NMR, especially of dilute analytes in complex mixtures, is hampered by low sensitivity due to the low nuclear polarization at thermal equilibrium. Parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP) has grown into an attractive, relatively low-cost, and versatile technique to produce non-equilibrium nuclear polarization, or hyperpolarization, resulting in NMR signal enhancements of 2-3 order of magnitudes in specific substrate molecules, enabling detection at nanomolar concentrations. The goal of this PDF project is to setup and exploit PHIP to (i) push the sensitivity of quantitative NMR to unprecedented limits, enabling orders of magnitudes lower limits of detection and quantification, and (ii) enable the use of a larger number of nuclear spin qubits for the simulation of more complex quantum algorithms by offsetting the inherent polarization loss during computation.

In order to be considered for the program please include the following in your application, please note that you will need to attach the required documents as per the list below when submitting your application. Failure to do so will result in your application being excluded from searches.

• Resume
• Statement of Interest in the project (maximum one page in length)
• PhD Transcript - an electronic copy is sufficient, it does not have to be an official version.
• List of Publication