Engineering & Technology Studentship

The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in northern Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor (home to ALMA), and the ESO Headquarters are located in Garching, near Munich, Germany. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory, and will host and operate the southern array of the Cherenkov Telescope Array, the world's largest and most sensitive high energy gamma-ray observatory. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. On Cerro Armazones, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky" and whose operations will be fully integrated into the Paranal Observatory. ESO is offering 1 PhD studentship opportunity within its Directorate of Engineering, in Garching bei München. **Engineering & Technology Studentship** ======================================== Garching Deadline 31/12/2026 **Duration:** ------------- up to 3 years. **Starting Date:** ------------------ Q3 2027. **Studentship Details** ----------------------- ESO's PhD studentships provide professional experience in an international scientific and technological environment and offer exposure to the activities of one of the world's leading astronomical organisations. Students at ESO have the opportunity to work on exciting research and development projects, contributing to the cutting edge of telescope and instrumentation engineering alongside experts in their field. ESO's studentships are done in collaboration with research institutes and industries in ESO Member States providing fruitful, multi-disciplinary interactions, rich in knowledge exchange. Note that ESO does not award PhDs, so students must be registered in a doctoral school and therefore, a professor, habilitated to the supervision of PhD theses, must be found before the start of the PhD. The candidate can propose a professor at their home university, or a supervisor and doctoral school will be looked for among the collaborators of ESO. We offer the following subjects to choose from, in different engineering fields: * Real Time Computing for Adaptive Optics (in the Control Software and Engineering Department): SAFE-RL: a safety-supervised reinforcement-learning control engine for adaptive optics - from SPARTA to the ELT * Wavefront control - phasing of mirrors (in the Optical Engineering Department): From the laboratory to the sky: maturing a Zernike phasing sensor for the segmented primary mirror of the