************************************************************************ IERS Message No. 69 February 18, 2005 ************************************************************************ PhD or Postdoctoral position within the Descartes Prize Nutation Project GALILEO In November 2003, the Descartes Prize was awarded to a European consortium of scientists lead by V. Dehant and a certain amount of money was received. The consortium decided to use it for PhD or postdoctoral positions in the frame of research on the understanding of the next decimal in nutation. After an open call for proposals several research projects and travel grants were accepted by a review board. For one of these projects, called "GALILEO", a PhD or postdoctoral fellowship for 6 months to one year (a further extension is rather likely) is offered here. Nutations are mainly observed using VLBI and partly by GPS for the short periods. The upcoming European Galileo system, as well as the modernization of GPS will allow better precisions of all parameters, including the nutations. The new combined GPS/GALILEO constellations and the future GNSS signals can lead to a better determination, not only of short period nutations, but also of all the important geophysical nutations, provided that long enough data series exist. Furthermore, as each space geodetic technique has its own strengths but also limitations, combinations of nutation time series based on VLBI, GPS, and Galileo are foreseen in the future. Moreover, combinations on the SINEX level and on the observational level will also be done. One part of the project will include a detailed study using simulated Galileo data. Specialists in the nutation modeling and nutation computation using GPS and VLBI are at TU Vienna (Robert Weber, Harald Schuh) and at ROB, Brussels (Fabian Roosbeek, Carine Bruyninx, Veronique Dehant). Additionally, Jim Ray (NOAA) and Markus Rothacher (GFZ, Potsdam) have also been working on that problem and are consequently advisor of this project as well. We foresee one or two PhD students or post-docs for 6 months or one year for working at ROB in Brussels and/or at Vienna TU preferably in international exchange. The project GALILEO is supposed to start as soon as possible in 2005. Applications should be sent to Veronique Dehant (v.dehant@oma.be) until March 15, 2005. ************************************************************************ IERS Messages are edited and distributed by the IERS Central Bureau. To subscribe or unsubscribe, please write to . Archives: http://www.iers.org/iers/publications/messages/ ************************************************************************