Utrecht University, Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Earth Sciences

Utrecht University’s Faculty of Geosciences studies the Earth: from the Earth’s core to its surface, including man’s spatial and material utilisation of the Earth – always with a focus on sustainability and innovation. With a population of 3,400 students (BSc and MSc) and 720 staff, the Faculty is a strong and challenging organisation. The Faculty is organised in four Departments: Earth Sciences, Physical Geography, Sustainable Development, and Human Geography & Spatial Planning.

The Department of Earth Sciences conducts teaching and research across the full range of the solid Earth and environmental Earth sciences, with activities in almost all areas of geology, geochemistry, geophysics, biogeology and hydrogeology. Our key research themes are Earth & Planetary Processes, Sustainable Use of the Subsurface, Planetary Health & Environment, and Climate & Life.The department hosts a highly international tenured staff of over 50 scientists and more than 110 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. We house or have access to a wide variety of world-class laboratories, among which are UU’s Electron Microscopy Centre, the Geolab, and the Earth Simulation Lab. We also have excellent High- Performance Computing facilities.

About Utrecht
Utrecht is the fourth largest city in the Netherlands with a population of nearly 360,000 and forms a hub in the middle of the country. Its historical city centre and its modern central station can easily be reached from our campus in Utrecht Science Park by public transport or by a 15-minute bicycle ride. Utrecht boasts beautiful canals with extraordinary wharf cellars housing cafés and terraces by the water, as well as a broad variety of shops and boutiques.

Homepage: https://www.uu.nl/geo/aw

The Department of Earth Sciences is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate with an MSc background in Earth, Environmental or Agriculture Sciences or other appropriate fields. You will work on the project The coupled soil carbon-nitrogen-phosphorus cycles and their response to human activities and climate change.

Soils are the largest terrestrial reservoirs of carbon ( C ) , nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P), playing a crucial role in global biogeochemical cycles. The soil cycles of C, N, and P interact dynamically with each other, but some of their individual pathways also differ. Spatial heterogeneity and temporal changes in climate, hydrological cycle, atmospheric chemical components, soil physiochemical properties, vegetations, and human activities (e.g., land-use change, agriculture, urbanization) collectively lead to changes in soil C-N-P cycling.

In this four-year study, you will develop a state-of-art global spatially explicit, integrated, mechanistic, coupled soil biogeochemistry model for the dynamic interconnected C-N-P cycling. This model will build on our pioneering model framework Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment-Dynamic Global Nutrient Model (IMAGE-DGNM), which tracks the changes in climate, hydrological cycle, land cover, and human activities since the pre-industrial era. You will collect and synthesise the latest field and remote-sensing-based observation databases and reported coupled kinetics from labs and culture experiments, and use them to construct and validate the model. On this basis, we will quantify the spatiotemporal changes in global soil coupled C-N-P cycling from the pre-industrial era till the present and assess the influences of climate change and a variety of human activities. Questions regarding the interdependencies among C, N and P will be the research focus, such as how nutrient imbalance regulates/disrupts global soil C sequestration and how CO₂ fertilisation influences N and P storage in soils and loss to waters and the atmosphere. We will further run the model to project their future changes under different scenarios. We invite you to share your ideas and suggestions for this innovative project in your application letter.

A personalised training programme will be set up, reflecting your training needs and career objectives. About 20% of your time will be dedicated to this training component, which includes following courses/workshops as well as training on the job in assisting in the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes of the department at Utrecht University.

Your qualities
You are a motivated team player, have experience in modelling using programming language(s). Being fluent in the use of Python or a similar programming language is essential.

You have completed your MSc degree in Earth Sciences, Environmental Science, Agricultural Science or a related discipline by the time the position starts. Furthermore, you have:

• strong and demonstrable skills in running transport, cycling or budget models or Earth System Model(s) (shown by a relevant master research project experience or course study);
• a theoretical background and an interest in coupled soil C-N-P cycling, biogeochemistry, integrated assessment, human perturbations, climate change, and sustainability issues (shown by a relevant master research project experience or courses);
  strong analytical skills;
• willingness to experiment with new data collection and model methodology development;
• motivation to cooperate in a diverse and multidisciplinary research team;
• excellent communication skills.

Due to the international character of our research, good command of spoken and written English is also essential. We highly encourage applicants from all members of our community and of diverse backgrounds to join us.

Terms of employment
You will be offered a full-time PhD position, initially for one year with extension to four years in total upon a successful assessment in the first year, and with the specific intent that it results in a doctorate within this period. The gross monthly salary starts with € 2,901 in the first year and increases to € 3,707 in the fourth year of employment with a full-time appointment. Salaries are supplemented with a holiday bonus of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8,3% per year. A pension scheme, partially paid parental leave, and flexible employment conditions are based on the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities.

In addition to the collective employment conditions, Utrecht University has a number of schemes and facilities of its own for employees. These include agreements on professional development, leave arrangements, sports and cultural schemes, and you get discounts on software and other IT products. We also give you the opportunity to expand your terms of employment through the Employment Conditions Selection Model. This is how we encourage you to grow. For more information, please visit Working at Utrecht University.

For informal questions (not for application), contact Dr Junjie Wang at j.wang3@uu.nl.

To apply, please follow the link to the corresponding advertisement on our own website and follow the guidelines mentioned there. The application deadline is May 5th, 2025. The preferred starting date is in summer of 2025 and no later than October 1st, 2025.

Note that international candidates that need a visa/work permit for the Netherlands require at least four months processing time after selection and acceptance. This will be arranged with help of the International Service Desk of our university. Finding appropriate housing in or near Utrecht is your own responsibility and, unfortunately, we must warn that it is a tight market at the moment. In case of general questions about working and living in The Netherlands, please consult the Dutch Mobility Portal.

Online screening may be part of the selection. Commercial response to this ad is not appreciated.