PhD Opportunities in Environmental Sustainability in Switzerland

The University of Zurich is offering a four-year, 80% PhD position in Large-Scale In-Situ Experiments on Glacier Ice Rheology and Thermodynamics within the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded LISERT project. The doctoral researcher will join the Glaciology and Geomorphodynamics Group in the Department of Geography and investigate how temperate glacier ice deforms under active forcing at metre scales. The research combines large-scale in-situ glacier measurements, structural-geological analy...

The Geothermal Energy and Geofluids Group at ETH Zürich is hiring a PhD researcher in magnetic resonance applied to porous media. The project focuses on method development using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), pulsed-EPR-MRI, and dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP). These techniques will be used to investigate chemical and physical processes in porous media, including natural rock formations relevant to geothermal energy and geofluids. The position is available...

Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, invites applications for three PhD positions in evolutionary ecology, evolutionary genomics, and ecosystem science. The four-year Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project investigates how biotic and abiotic selection shape species interactions, community assembly, evolution, and ecosystem functioning in sub-Arctic lakes of Southern Greenland. The three projects focus on: (1) evolutionary ecology of copepods, including ...

The WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, part of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and the ETH Domain, is offering a PhD position in the Alpine Remote Sensing group at the CERC research centre in Davos, Switzerland, starting in January 2027. The doctoral researcher will develop, test, and implement new methods for investigating large deep-seated landslides in the Southern Swiss Alps. The project combines fieldwork, monitoring, remote sensing, a...

ETH Zurich’s Geothermal Energy & Geofluids Group in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences invites applications for a full-time PhD position in magnetic resonance applications for porous media. The project develops and applies multimodal nuclear magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging (NMR/MRI), pulsed-EPR-MRI, and dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) techniques to investigate chemical and physical processes in natural rock and fractured porous media. Research topics may include ...

The University of Basel in Switzerland is offering a fully funded, four-year PhD position in the Atmospheric Sciences group within the Department of Environmental Sciences. The project focuses on aerosol-phase synthesis and photocatalytic applications of metal and metal oxide nanoparticles for CO2 reduction. The successful doctoral researcher will generate nanoparticles with different compositions in the gas phase and characterize them using advanced techniques, including transmission electron m...

The University of Fribourg in Switzerland is offering a full-time, ERC-funded PhD position in the Department of Chemistry within Pascal Bertsch’s group and the ERC Starting Grant project GI-CORONA. The doctoral researcher will formulate lipid-based colloids, including emulsions, liposomes and lipid nanoparticles, and investigate how these systems digest in the gut and which proteins form their gastrointestinal “biocorona.” The project aims to use this knowledge to design improved oral drug-deliv...

EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) is advertising a PhD position in Trade-off and tipping dynamics in urban transitions within the Laboratory for Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS) at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC), in Lausanne, Switzerland . The project sits at the intersection of urban sustainability transitions , agent-based modelling , urban systems , energy transitions , and food systems . The successful candidate will e...

Doctoral Position in Groundwater Microbial and Viral Ecology and Environmental Bioinformatics at ETH Zürich The Geomitigation of Greenhouse Gases group at ETH Zürich is recruiting a highly motivated doctoral candidate to join a newly funded SNSF interdisciplinary project. The project examines how microbial and viral communities shape carbon cycling in groundwater systems, combining environmental microbiology, microbial ecology, viral ecology, environmental genomics, hydrogeochemistry, and bioinf...