PhD Opportunities in Remote Sensing in Switzerland

ETH Zurich is offering a fully funded four-year doctoral position in 3D scene reconstruction and multi-modal sensing for information-rich digital twins of stone-built heritage. The project is part of the collaborative HC3 – Heritage Conservation Collaboration Copilots initiative, led by the Chair of Physical Chemistry of Building Materials and the Chair of Geosensors and Engineering Geodesy. The doctoral researcher will work on reality capture at scale, including LiDAR and imaging technologies d...

The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL is offering a full-time PhD position in the Alpine Remote Sensing group within the Climate Change, Extreme Events and Natural Hazards in the Alpine Region (CERC) research center. The position is based primarily at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF in Davos, Switzerland, with periods at SUPSI in Mendrisio and fieldwork in Canton Ticino. The PhD research will develop, test, and implement methodologies for i...

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...

EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland is offering a full-time PhD position within the Plant Ecology Research Laboratory (PERL) focused on forest ecophysiology , remote sensing , forest ecology , and plant responses to drought . The project will study how forest canopy temperature and spectral properties reflect tree physiological responses to increasing atmospheric drought and soil water limitation. The research combines field ecophysiology, forest drought experiments, thermal and spectral remote sensin...

PhD opportunity at the Centre for Space and Habitability and the Division for Space Research and Planetary Sciences , University of Bern, within the new NCCR Genesis research infrastructure. The project sits at the intersection of physics , chemistry , biology , earth science , and astronomy , with a strong focus on astrobiology , biosignatures , and life detection . The PhD research will combine remote sensing via circular spectro-polarimetry with in situ laser-based mass spectrometry to detect...

PhD position at the Centre for Space and Habitability, University of Bern within the new NCCR Genesis research infrastructure. The project focuses on remote sensing of microorganisms and the detectability of biosignatures in extreme environments , especially icy-moon conditions relevant to future life-detection missions such as ESA’s planned L4 mission to Enceladus. Research topics include spectro-polarimetry, optics, vacuum and low-temperature experiments, radiation exposure, bacterial samples ...

Two Doctoral Positions in Tropical Forest Ecology, Animal-Plant Interactions and Forest Restoration at ETH Zürich in the Species Interactions and Ecosystem Health group . The project, AniCaRes – Animating Carbon Restoration , is an SNSF Starting Grant project examining how animals shape tropical forest regeneration and carbon recovery. The research combines tropical ecology , animal-plant interactions , forest restoration , seed dispersal , molecular ecology , DNA metabarcoding/eDNA , animal mon...

PhD opportunity at EPFL Lausanne: Measurement and modeling of urban verticality in Africa. This full-time PhD position is part of the Vertical Africa: Visualizing Urban Change, Negotiating Power, Designing Sustainable Cities (VERTICAF) project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and hosted at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) . The project is co-led by Professors Didier Péclard and Armelle Choplin (University of Geneva) and Jérôme Chenal (EPFL), in partnership with the...