[Todos] postdoc position (fwd)

[Horacio Grinberg]

Hola a todos;
 	Reenvio informacion sobre la posibilidad de una posicion postdoct 
en Francia.
Saludos
Horacio Grinberg


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 16:14:57 +0200
From: Vincent Pouthier <vincent.pouthier en UNIV-FCOMTE.FR>
To: MOLECULAR-DYNAMICS-NEWS en JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: postdoc position


A Postdoctoral Research Associate appointment is available in the «
Complexes Structures Dynamics » group of the UTINAM Institute in BESANCON
(France).
The details of the position are summarized below :

Title : 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
Application deadline : September the first, 2009
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 size 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. Application to other systems could
be considered : quantum diffusion of narrow band exciton in lattice
(anharmonic Holstein model, Anderson model with correlated disorder,
Hubbard model …)

- 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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