Search Science Careers in the Basque Country

From last week on, sciencecareers.eu offers a listing of the most relevant science careers available in the Basque Country. Subscribe their newsletter and visit their site regularly. More HPC specific jobs will be reflected on this blog. The site is promoted by Ikerbasque.

Cambridge Judge Education and Google in the Basque Country

If you are planning to relocate your company or develop a career in business, the Basque Country can help you benefit from a perfect business education environment. Deusto Business School offers a program in Executive Business Innovation in conjunction with Cambridge Judge.
Deusto Business School is a renowned business school, and Google was visiting last week, to hire some of its graduates.

"In today´s global economy, where there is a continuous accelerating speed of change, there is no continuity without constant renewal. Innovation has become a key organizational capability for business success, through developing current businesses or creating new enterprises from existing ones.

The Executive Master in Business Innovation (MBI) from Deusto Business School has been specially designed to provide a unique experience that will boost you and your organisation´s creativity and enhance innovation capabilities. It will provide a space for reflection to reconsider the taken-for-granted managerial assumptions from traditional business programmes."

Cellular automata and GPU computations

Who: Nestor Ferrando, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia

Place: Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC).Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal, 4 (nearby the Facultad de Quimica), Donostia

Date: Thursday, December 2, 2010, 12:00

FEM models, Loads Calculation and Mechanical Simulation Engineers in India

These positions are open in India for the wind generators Basque firm Gamesa.

LOADS CALCULATION EXPERT

Technical:Wind converter design concepts ,aerodinamics, structural dynamics IEC standards .
Management: Team building, initiative, team-work other area relationship, international culture, open minded

IT Knowledge: WEC aerolastical models (Bladed, FLEX, HAWC, Fast, Phatas, _HAWCStab)

Mechanical Simulation Group Manager

Technical: FEM Codes, Materials, Heat transfer, Noise, Bolted Joints, Weldings
Management: Team building, leadership, team-work, negotiation, other area relationship, international culture, open minded
Languages: English Very High; Spanish, recommended

IT Knowledge: ABAQUS / Matlab-Simulink-SimMechanics / Hypermesh / Patran / Nastran + GAMESA Corporate Tools

Experience: Above 10 years

FEM MODEL ENGINEER

Technical: FEM Codes, Materials, Heat transfer, Noise, Bolted Joints, Weldings

IT Knowledge: ABAQUS / Hypermesh / Patran + GAMESA Corporate Tools

Languages: English Very High;

Experience: 5 years recommended

Course on Aerodynamics by Epsilon Euskadi

There will be a second call for the following months, according to their web page.

RF Acceleration Structures Engineer/Scientist

Original document here: more info here.

Description: This is a post within the Acceleration Structures group. The candidate will be required to become familiar with science and technology of RF acceleration structures and, in particular, Drift-Tube LINAC (DTL), which are a standard component in linear particle accelerators. Candidate will work on mechanical, thermal and electromagnetic analysis, as well as on installation and commissioning of DTL structure, including precise alignment of the drift tubes with respect to the girder, which will be helpful in the commissioning and operation of the ESS-Bilbao accelerator.

Qualifications and experience: Candidates should have an Engineering/Physics degree (or higher) with skills in electromechanical analysis and simulation.

Language skills: Excellent oral and written English is essential; knowledge of French, German and other European languages would be an advantage.

Notes: Selected candidates may be required to stay two years in international scientific facilities such as ISIS, CERN, ILL, etc., and to carry out research assignments in these locations. Selected candidates will be subject to an initial three-year contract, which may be extended.

How to apply: Send a copy of your CV as well as a cover letter and some references if available to: Personnel Department, Att.: ESS-BILBAO Recruitment: direccion@essbilbao.com. Vacancy reference: DTL/EICOI-2010.

Surf and Ski/Snowboard - Why should your HPC project be with us?

The Basque Country is warm enough during summer, and it consists of 255 kilometers of coast to surf along this part of the Cantabric Sea -that is an Atlantic Climate. So you can expect good waves around. You will find more information here, or use Google Earth to find the spots in the map. The Basque Surfing federation web page is here. And some more info here.

If you are more sort of Ski or Snowboard person, you should know that the Basque Country, besides being an industrial hub, it is located at the beginning of the west Pirinees. Fantastic French and Spanish Ski resorts are just two hours drive from the Basque Country.

Learning from others (Data Centers)

This article about Google's last data center in Finland is really interesting. I have been suggesting, now for a year, that a similar thing could be done in the Basque Country. There are more examples over there. But ...

See the video from Finland here in English.

More updates on my side before end of the year!

Ikerchem Drug Design Platform

We already talked about Ikerchem. Today's news is that Ikerchem has decided to use CESCA's Drug Design Supercomputing Platform -a small and highly efficient catalan center-.

Nonetheless the Director's profile is quite impressive, higher education with the Fullbright scheme and UCLA.

To me CESCA it is also a good example of management. However I do not fully share their view, I think the Basque is more into some sort of CIC Sysgune.

Multiple Postdocs in Physics, in San Sebastian Donostia

Applications here.

Theoretical studies of electronic transport in nanostructures

Magnetoelectric couplings and related optical responses

Electronic excitations and many-body effects in solids, surfaces, and nanostructures

Ab-initio calculation of dielectric response at the surface

Further reading here.

Postdoc at Ion Channels Group, in Bilbao

Based in Bilbao, Basque Country. Applications here.

A Postdoctoral/Research Assistant/Technician two year position is immediately available at the Ion Channels group, at the Unit of Biophysics (UB), Spanish Council of Research (CSIC), Spain.
We are seeking a highly motivated individual, interested to investigate the traffic of ion channels to the plasma membrane. Recent research, indicates that calmodulin plays an important role in a variety of cellular functions including endo-exocytic membrane trafficking.

Learning from others

The Victorian life sciences computation iniative could be a good example for the Basque bioregion. One of their key problems is that there is a lot of duplication of resources and personel, what increases cost.
The center is forming, but I believe it is quite important to understand their case, as we are quite similar with this Australian region.

• to strengthen the outstanding life sciences reputation and capability of Victorian institutions and researchers
• to make significant investment in high performance computing facilities and research support services

However I would never follow a classic supercomputing center model. The model is old, and probably useless. What I always talk about, is specialization, top quality management and operation strategy. A supercomputing per se is void.

The previous web page provides details and comprehensive information.

International project to compare the genomes of 12 fungi and to identify their potential for biodegradation of contaminants

In Pamplona,

Professor of Microbiology at the Public University of Navarre, Gerardo Pisabarro De Lucas, is to coordinate one of the projects of the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), dependent upon the Office of Science of the United States Department of Energy and involved in the production of biofuels. In concrete, his research team (Genetics and Microbiology Team) will undertake a comparison of the expression of the genomes of 12 fungi with the goal of finding out the strategies used by these organisms to break down wood to lignin. Lignin is a component of trees and other woody plants the degradation of which is necessary for cellulose — the main store of organic carbon on the planet — to be able to transform itself to biofuel.

Genetadi involved in a new international network seeking foetal abnormalities detecting biomarkers

The basque country company Genetadi participates in a new international research network looking for new non-invasive prenatal biomarkers for congenital anomalies. The project “Search for non-invasive biomarkers for the diagnosis of aneuploidies: integral study of the genome, proteome and metabolome" has been funded by the EU 7FP with one million euros.

Further read here.

Nanogune Cleanroom

A video of the nanogune installations in San Sebastian Donostia;

Development of a bone-regenerating drug

The scientific corporation Tecnalia and the biotech company Histocell announced at Biospain 2010 their strategic alliance for the development of a new product in the field of regenerative medicine.

Further here.

Intelligent Systems Group

This group, based at the Computer Science Faculty of University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian, combines what in essence is the root of success for many well known online businesses. Their activities are right now concentrated on:

INTELLIGENT DATA ANALYSIS

• Bayesian Networks, specially for supervised classification
• Clustering techniques
• Data mining, machine learning and knowledge discovery from databases, in general
• Feature Subset Selection in Machine Learning
• Statistical Methods for data analysis

Optimization

• Genetic Algorithms
• Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (EDA)

Applications

• Biomedical domains. Data modelization for diagnosis and prognosis problems.
• Bioinformatics. Biomarker discovery.
• Oceanographic domains. Ecologycal domains.

High-performace computing

• Parallel implementation of techniques developed or used at ISG
• Parallel computing hardware
• Interconnection networks
• Grid computing
• Application of machine learning and optimization techniques to scheduling mechanisms

Update 11th Nov 2010. Researchers willing to join these teams or others in the Basque Country, should apply to Ikerbasque. Next call is due end of 2010 to start in 2011.

Khegal Aeronautica

It is a basque firm, that supplies components to the aeronautics, oil, automotive and marine industries.

Read their simulation platform case study here.

Khegal is an SME created and supported by the local entrepreneurship Bic-Berrilan.

Head of International Projects (Technologies of Composite Materials for Aeronautic Applications)

In San Sebastian. Applications here.

Qualifications:

We are looking to those persons with a Third Level qualification in Aeronautic Engineering (or in Mechanical/Materials Engineering with work experience in the aeronautics sector).

Minimum experience required:

Experience of at least 10 years in the field of composite materials technologies and their processes. Likewise experience in international level R+D projects and in negotiations with companies in the aeronautics sector.

Languages:

It is essential to have complete fluency in English, with credit being given to a second foreign language.

Systems Biology and regulation of mitochondrial metabolism: potential applications to obesity

Based in San Sebastian. Applications here.

Gene sequencing has led to the emergence of Systems Biology, which tries to reconstruct and model the various networks of molecular interaction that occur within a cellular system with the goal of looking for emerging properties of biomedical/biotechnological interest.

Mitochondrial metabolism plays an important role in maintaining a balance of energy equilibrium within an organism and is of great interest in a variety of illnesses.

This project deals with the reconstruction, analysis and regulation of mitochondrial metabolism using Systems Biology with a focus on obesity.

Nanoptics, Nanomagnetism, and Nanodevices opportunities

CIC nanoGUNE is seeking to recruit talented, enthusiastic people who will participate in its growing scientific program and serve its collaborative, technology transfer and outreach engaging mission. This includes both senior and junior researchers, post-docs, graduate students, highly qualified technicians, and administrative and other supporting staff.

Researcher in Electrical Energy Storage - Ikerlan

Applications here.

The candidate will be in charge of designing and developing Battery Management Systems (BMS) which performs advanced functions like monitoring and protection of cells, SOC (state of charge) and SOH (state of health) estimation, cell balancing and others.

We demand:

- Recent PhD in electrical/electronic engineering, chemical engineering, or closely related field.

- The ability to perform well in team research.

- Extensive direct experience in Battery Management Systems (BMS) development (HW and SW).

- Extensive experience with Battery modeling and SOC/SOH estimation algorithms.

- Excellent communication skills, both oral and written.

Food for HPC thought

I am happy with the changes for i2Basque -the fact that is going to be integrated with Ikerbasque, and by the way I hope that the excelent team stays beyond 2011-. I have seen many new HPC centers fail on something that Ikerbasque does very well: partnership with each research institution in the Basque arena. And we can say they have been quite successful.

Because the major failure of new supercomputing centers is that they can not do science: they do not publish, or at least not enough. However they were aimed for that! yeah but the reality is that without people, without ideas, without real scientific centers behind, they are nothing but an empty box, rented to other scientists and normally badly managed as their directors are researchers that have to stop their research to manage -so why the hell do we have management gradutes for?-. I have always argued this, and I still believe that supercomputing centers as such are a very old void idea nowadays. As an example, I have heard that some of the new ones have operated for a few years without having managed to get access to online publication services :from the universities that use their own systems!- ... We need more focus science and better service.

Having said this: what can these centers offer or improve ? Definetely service. It is unsound that nowadays, when most of researchers need less than 512 cores, there is so much burochracy to request a few hours, for a few months. This is unfortunately becoming a major problem as most of their codes will end up running on in-house facilities: no paperwork, no timeframe. That is why new supercomputing centers still fail, because service is conceived as if there was going to be huge runs inside their systems (>10,000 cpus or TBs of memory). But that is not practical, and due to the huge shifts in computer technology prices/performance, this is not sustainable in the present economic environment. Big clusters are for big projects. Lets say that nowadays a cost-effective system is built upon a few thousands (4-k) cpus.

But my point today is service and computer systems research. These two are my wishes for the new i2basque. Top quality service (be inside EJIE is the first step, so congrats for that), top quality systems, 24*7 if needed, top quality code support team, good helpdesk and more importantly happy and passionate employees -lets stop the HPC cowboys forever, please-. On the other side, i2Basque has one potential that can not be ignored. There should be some sort of commitment to pure systems research. What is more, what is the science debt clock with the Linux Kernel itself ? How long will this run for ? How many of our science projects would not exist without it ? For how long supercomputing centers are not going to commit patches and updates to the Linux Kernel ?