Our team and mission

The Advanced Concepts and Studies Office ensures the overall coordination, coherence and performance of programme and studies in support to the preparation of the Agency’s future activities, in line with its long-term strategic objectives and priorities. This includes discovery activities (www.esa.int/discovery) via the Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP) and the Advanced Concepts Team (ACT), ESA’s in-house research think tank.

The ACT monitors, performs and fosters beyond-the-horizon multidisciplinary research for space, exploring new approaches to space-related R&D (including competitions, prizes, games), research for disruptive innovation, developing an expert network at academic level and providing a capability for fast first look analysis of problems, challenges and opportunities. The ACT engages in collaborative research with university institutes and research centres, focusing on advanced research topics of potential strategic interest to the space sector and in experimenting with new forms of teamwork. To achieve this goal, a multidisciplinary research environment is provided, in which young scientific and engineering post-doctoral and post-graduate researchers carry out work on emerging technologies and innovative concepts. 

More information on the team is accessible on the ACT website (www.esa.int/act). 

You are encouraged to visit the ESA website: http://www.esa.int

Field(s) of activity/research for the traineeship

As a Young Graduate Trainee, you will develop most of your activity in the field of computational biology, intended as the use of data analysis, mathematical modelling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and their relationships. The field has close ties and is expected to bring benefits to other scientific fields well established in ESA and in the ACT, such as biomimetics, evolutionary computation, and astrobiology research.

While you are encouraged to propose your own projects in the field, you may also choose to work on any of the following projects:

• Dynamics and stability of ecosystems,
• Non-equilibrium thermodynamics in biology,
• Agent-based and complex systems modelling of biological systems, 
• Population genomics in interstellar travels,
• Programmable biology such as dna computing and storage, and non-neural cellular computing.

You will be a member of the Advanced Concepts Team (https://www.esa.int/act) and therefore expected to contribute to the development and the assessment of new concepts and technologies for space applications. This will be done in close interaction with ACT researchers who work on a broad range of disciplines including, informatics, artificial intelligence, climate modelling, energy systems, fundamental physics, biomimetics, computational management science and mission analysis. Based on your detailed background and interests and the opportunities and needs of the team, you will be involved in a number of other ACT initiatives (including studies conducted via the Ariadna scheme, http://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/ariadna/index.html) and participate in reporting and communicating results of the team (internally and externally).

Technical competencies

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation

Operational Efficiency

Fostering Cooperation

Relationship Management

Continuous Improvement

Forward Thinking

Education

You should have just completed, or be in the final year of your Master’s degree in computational biology, synthetic biology or related fields.

Additional requirements

You should have good interpersonal and communication skills and should be able to work in a multicultural environment, both independently and as part of a team.

You should also show a genuine interest in applied academic research, together with sound analytical skills, avid curiosity and a natural aptitude to self-motivation and teamwork.

The working languages of the Agency are English and French. A good knowledge of one of these is required. Knowledge of another Member State language would be an asset.

During the interview motivation and overall professional perspective/career goals will also be explored.