[Physics opps] FW: Open Position at MIT's Haystack Observatory

[8-opps@mit.edu]

-----Original Message-----
From: Shep Doeleman [mailto:dole at haystack.mit.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 2:45 PM
To: young_c at mit.edu; savioli at mit.edu
Subject: Open Position at MIT's Haystack Observatory


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Shep Doeleman
Research Scientist
MIT
Haystack Observatory

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Job Posting Software/Computer Engineer at MIT Haystack Observatory

The MIT Haystack Observatory, in Westford, Massachusetts, has an
immediate opening for a junior software/computer engineer to work on
cutting edge radio astronomy applications.  The successful candidate
will have strong software skills (C, C++, and/or Python), and preferably
have experience assembling and modifying COTS (commercial off the shelf)
computer hardware for novel applications.  The ideal candidate will have
a Bachelor's degree, software/hardware experience.  Travel to support
occasional astronomical observing at telescopes may be required.

Haystack Observatory is internationally known for developing,
commissioning, and deploying state of the art instrumentation for Very
Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), in which multiple radio telescopes
located around the globe are combined in order to make an Earth-sized
virtual telescope.  This technique produces a distributed instrument
that delivers the highest angular resolution of any telescope (over 2000
times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope).  To reach even
finer angular resolution, we are pushing this technique to the highest
observing frequencies ever attempted.  Our group is currently assembling
an 'Event Horizon Telescope', a high frequency global VLBI array, which
will be able to observe and image the Event Horizon of the super massive
black hole at the center of the Milky Way.  Ideally, the successful
applicant will want to join the team and play a role in what we feel
will be some of the most exciting astrophysical observations of the next
decade.

A sample project pertaining to the VLBI project would be to develop a
Burst Mode data recorder capable of receiving 16Gbits/sec for ~1 minute
and writing the data to a RAID array at slower speeds.   Other projects
include developing a high capacity (~2 Terabyte) RAM buffer for general
astronomical applications including a low-frequency radio-telescope that
Haystack is building in the Outback of Australia.  This telescope, the
MWA (Murchison Widefield Array), will use ~8000 dipole antennas spread
across the desert to study the Epoch of Reionization, the moment when
light from the first stars and Galaxies ionized the neutral Hydrogen in
the universe, among other science areas.  Haystack is also working on a
software-based correlation engine that is designed to take signals from
widely separated radio telescopes and synthesize VLBI data sets to be
used for imaging.  Fast, multi-core processors are now making it
possible to perform this step in commercial hardware instead of
custom-build ASIC hardware.

Haystack Observatory is an MIT interdisciplinary research center
situated on 1300 acres of forested land, 35 miles northwest of the MIT
campus (http://www.haystack.mit.edu).  The position comes with full MIT
benefits.  Email CV's to resume at haystack.mit.edu.  Contact
sdoeleman at haystack.mit.edu with questions regarding the position.








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