Job Description

Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL
The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL is part of the ETH Domain. Approximately 600 people work on the sustainable use and protection of the environment and on the handling of natural hazards.

The Research Group Dendrosciences uses tree rings to investigate and understand environmental impacts on tree growth and to reconstruct past environmental changes at scales ranging from minutes to millennia and from cells to ecosystems around the globe. From

1 November 2025

, we offer another

4-year position

as a

PhD student in Palaeoclimatology/-ecology (f/m/d)

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As part of the SNF-project Signatures of Global Late Glacial Climate Change in Tree-Ring Records (SiGnaL), co-led by the Dendrosciences group at WSL and the Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics (LIP) at ETH Zurich, you will, along with two other PhD students and technicians, contribute to understanding the nature and drivers of abrupt climate changes during the Late Glacial period (approximately 11'000-15'000 years ago). Your work will include the collection, measurement, and integration of fossil wood and tree-ring material from various global sites. Through a multi-proxy approach - combining radiocarbon dating, stable isotope ratios, and quantitative wood anatomy - you will help to date and synchronize records across regions and reconstruct regional to global climate dynamics. This will help refine our understanding of Late Glacial climate dynamics and contribute to improvements of the global radiocarbon calibration curve.

You will be part of an enthusiastic team of early career and leading researchers in dendrochronology, palaeoclimatology/-ecology, and radiocarbon dating. The position is based at WSL in Birmensdorf (Zurich) within the Dendrosciences group, a globally recognized center for tree-ring based research. Collaboration with international researchers from related institutions is also expected.

Among the three PhD students involved in the project, you will have a special emphasis on stable isotope analysis and on the climatic and eco-physiological interpretation of the tree-ring proxies.

You have a Master's degree in Environmental Sciences, Earth Sciences, or a related field, and preferably have already gained experience with radio-carbon and stable isotope measurements. You are comfortable analyzing and visualizing data in R or Python and are motivated to publish your results in scientific journals. You enjoy to work in the lab, with large datasets, and have an interest in interdisciplinary and international research. You like to work independently, structured and accurate. You are communicative and team-oriented and have excellent spoken and written English language skills as well as at least the knowledge of one Swiss national language.

Please send your complete application to Stefania Pe, Human Resources WSL, by uploading the requested documents through our webpage. Applications via email will not be considered. Kerstin Treydte, phone +41 (0)44 739 26 62, kerstin.treydte@wsl.ch, will be happy to answer any questions or offer further information. WSL is committed to diversity and inclusion as core values. We actively promote gender equality and foster an open, inclusive work environment.
Zurcherstrasse 111, CH-8903 Birmensdorf