[Todos] post doc position (fwd)

[Horacio Grinberg]

Hola a todos:
Estoy reenviado un mail de posicion post doc por si alguien esta 
interesado en el tema.
Saludos,
Horacio Grinberg


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 13:40:41 +0200
From: Vincent Pouthier <vincent.pouthier en UNIV-FCOMTE.FR>
To: MOLECULAR-DYNAMICS-NEWS en JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: post doc position

Dear Colleague,

Please call this announcement to the attention of any candidates who might be 
interested.

Sincerely yours
Vincent

Postdoc : Energy transfer in nonlinear quantum lattices : application to the 
vibrational energy flow in alpha-helices

Location: UTINAM Institute UMR-CNRS 6213
Université de Franche-Comté
25030 Besançon, cedex, FRANCE

Length: 9 months, starting as soon as possible considering the time needed by 
the person retained to get all the administrative papers necessary to work in 
France.

Financial conditions: The credits obtained allow us to warrant a gross salary 
of 1839 ? per month, which in reality means 1508 ? per month transferred on the 
bank account.

Requested profile: To develop these researches, we are looking for a candidate 
who has a strong background in either quantum non-linear dynamics, non 
equilibrium statistical mechanics, transport properties, dissipation, energy 
localization in molecular system or numerical analysis (i.e. ab initio 
calculations) applied to condensed or soft matter. In any case, the person 
retained must have completed his/her PHD since less than 2 years and NOT be of 
French nationality! Therefore, the applicants should enclose in their 
application, considerations allowing assessing the time they would need to get 
the authorization to work in France.

Contact : The applicants should send a detailed CV and a publications list to 
Dr. POUTHIER Vincent at :
vincent.pouthier en univ-fcomte.fr

Summary of the project:
Since the seminal work of Davydov on bioenergy transport in proteins, both 
theoretical and experimental evidences suggest that vibrational energy flow in 
alpha-helices may result from a polaron mechanism. The energy is mediated by 
the amide-I vibration which delocalizes along the peptide leading to the 
formation of an exciton called vibron. The vibron strongly interacts with the 
phonons describing the collective dynamics of the H-bond network. Therefore, 
its creation induces a lattice distortion and the vibron dressed by this 
distortion forms the so-called small polaron.

In that context, the project concerns the study of the transport properties of 
polaron or bi-polaron in a lattice of H bonded peptide units by taking into 
account on the very short lifetime of the amide-I vibration. Indeed, most of 
the previous works were based on Hamiltonians that conserve the polaron 
population. However, in proteins, the amide-I energy relaxation is rather fast 
and recent experiments have clearly shown that the polaron lifetime is 
typically of about T1=1.5 ps. The relaxation originates from intramolecular 
energy redistribution due to the anharmonic coupling between each amide-I mode 
and a set of intramolecular normal modes whose displacements are strongly 
localized on the C=O groups. Therefore, the Complex Structure Dynamics group of 
the UTINAM Institute is looking for a candidate able to develop one of the two 
following topics :
- Developing analytical models/calculations to study the transport properties 
in a finite site helix within a time convolutionless approach to account on the 
strong non markovian dynamics that arises from the discrete nature of the 
phonon energy spectrum.
- Performing ab initio calculations to characterize the detailed relaxation 
pathways responsible for the energy relaxation of the amide-I mode in a model 
helix. These calculations will give rise to a theoretical model to represent 
the bath of intramolecular normal modes responsible for energy relaxation.



-- 
Dr. POUTHIER Vincent
Chargé de Recherche CNRS
Institut UTINAM UMR CNRS 6213
25030 BESANCON  cedex
tel. 33 3 81 66 64 77

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