From working at the frontiers of climate research to using the world’s most powerful supercomputers to reaching toward fusion at the National Ignition Facility, Lawrence Livermore has always been at the forefront of the world’s most important scientific discoveries. Shouldn’t you be able to say the same thing about your career?
If working on interdisciplinary teams to tackle the most challenging scientific problems appeals to you, then consider joining us as a postdoc. You’ll get hands-on experience while working closely with leading scientific researchers and colleagues—and you will have the opportunity to make significant contributions in areas of national interest.
Our postdoctoral employees in LLNL’s Physical and Life Sciences (PLS) Directorate are talented scientists from across the broad spectrum of physical and biological sciences who work in a highly collaborative environment that places a premium on scientific innovation and publication.
Join a vibrant postdoc community!
Director:
Ted Baumann
The Lawrence Fellow Program is a highly competitive program that provides scientific freedom to pursue creative, groundbreaking projects of your own design.
On October 29, 2019, twelve Lawrence Livermore postdocs took to the stage, each with three slides and three minutes to answer the question: “Why is your research important?”
The postdoctoral research experience is a pivotal one for many scientists. During this time, they dig into the deepest technical details of their disciplines to advance scientific understanding. One challenge postdocs face is aptly communicating their often highly technical research to nonexperts in their field. To help them overcome this challenge, two years ago, the Laboratory’s University Relations and Science Education Office, led by Annie Kersting, launched a friendly competition. Called the Research Slam, the competition invites postdocs to each give a three-minute presentation about their research for a chance to win monetary prizes.
Jason Brodsky says his work is like “looking for a candle in a raging inferno.”
Brodsky’s specialty is rare-event detection, both during his Princeton graduate work on dark matter and his current postdoctoral research at LLNL, in which he searches for what he calls “the neutrinos that saved the universe.”
When Michael Campanell was a graduate student at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, he noticed something unusual: the boundary physics simulation he was running wasn’t behaving the way it was supposed to. A century of plasma theory predicted one thing, but Campanell’s simulation was doing another. This was the impetus for his thesis, and a big challenge to the status quo in his field. It also propelled him toward a career at LLNL.
Ivy Krystal Jones is a postdoc working in the High Pressure Physics/Physics (Materials Science) Division of the Physical & Life Sciences Directorate.
“I’m working on fabricating functionally graded solid-state laser gain media via direct ink writing and transparent ceramic processing.”
Picture this: it’s the day of your first poster presentation as a postdoc. You've picked out your best professional suit (or your only professional suit, reserved just for this occasion), your poster has been beautifully printed with help from the Lab's print plant, and your heart is racing with nerves and excitement. Your first interested visitor stops by, quizzically glances at your poster, and asks you for a short synopsis of your research for the non-specialist. How do you reply?
The PLS postdoc program offers young scientists the opportunity to collaborate with experienced researchers and make significant contributions in basic and applied research areas of national interest.
Current postdoctoral openings in Physical and Life Sciences are listed on the LLNL Find Your Job page.