PhD Student in Safe and Sustainable Green Electronics

Materials science and technology are our passion. With our cutting-edge research, Empa's around 1,100 employees make essential contributions to the well-being of society for a future worth living. Empa is a research institution of the ETH Domain.

Empa's Technology & Society Laboratory (TSL) is dedicated to creating and sharing knowledge supporting the transformation to a sustainable society within planetary boundaries by analyzing and evaluating novel materials and technologies from a circularity, life cycle impacts and safety perspective, and providing guidance for designing more sustainable materials, technologies and systems.

The ERAM group within TSL have great experience in SSbD, especially in combining different methods such as modeling mass flows analysis (MFA), Life cycle analysis (LCA) and semi-quantitative methods for decision support for sustainable innovation.

With the PhD work, we plan to adapt and advance the SSbD framework in the area of green electronics, with a special focus on bio-based materials and an application in agriculture, health and textiles, in order to identify application fields with high environmental sustainability potentials. This PhD position is part of the project FERNS (Holistic integration of eco-Friendly dEsign tools and mateRials, fabrication techNologies for the responsible co-creation of future Sustainable integrated electronic systems), an EU MCSA Doctoral Network with 15 funded 3-year PhD positions in parallel.

• Master Degree in environmental/natural sciences or engineering, or similar. 
• Experience with developing computational models 
• Preferably some experience with LCA, MFA, Risk Assessment, green electronics 
• Excellent communication skills and fluency in English (both written and oral)

Applicants must not have lived or carried out their main activity in Switzerland for more than 12 months in the past 3 years immediately prior to the Call deadline.

• A highly stimulating interdisciplinary research environment in a laboratory with more than 50 scientists dedicated to sustainability transformation 
• Opportunity to work in a network of 15 PhD students in parallel 
• Opportunities to present work at scientific conferences and to publish in high quality journals 
• Personal and professional development support

You will be based at Empa in St. Gallen (Claudia Som, principal supervisor, Dr. Roland Hischier and Prof. Dr. Bernd Nowack, co-supervisors) and enrolled as a PhD student at CML Leiden University NL (Prof. Jose M. Mogollón, doctoral advisor). The Institute of Environmental Sciences at CML has ample expertise in prospective LCA, upscaling methodologies for nascent technology development, and its integration into SSbD.

We live a culture of inclusion and respect. We welcome all people who are interested in innovative, sustainable and meaningful activities - that's what counts.

SarahStüdli, Bereichspersonalleiterin / HR Partner