FAIR Fellow and Associate Program
The FAIR Fellow and Associate Programme aims at attracting the brightest scientists in the field, by offering individuals unique opportunities for scientific and technological work at FAIR for a limited period. FAIR Fellows are the most prestigious early-career positions available at FAIR. Established scientists may be offered a rewarding research/development stay at FAIR as a FAIR Associate.
FAIR is an international accelerator facility, which is currently being built in Darmstadt. FAIR is progressively being taken into operation and offers unique research opportunities for nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics and nuclear reaction studies, hadronic physics, atomic and quantum physics, biophysics, plasma physics, materials research, accelerator science and IT. FAIR research is organized in four pillars:
- The compressed baryonic matter collaborations in the CBM pillar study QCD matter and the QCD phase diagram at highest baryon densities with heavy ion reaction which is complementary to LHC experiments focusing on very low baryon densities
- NUSTAR research concentrates on nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics investigations with nuclei far off stability.
- APPA is devoted to precision stud-ies on fundamental interactions and symmetries employing highly charged ions; high density plasma physics; atomic and material science studies; radio-biological investigations and other application-oriented studies.
- And QCD studies with cooled anti-protons are the goal of the PANDA collaboration.
There are two types of support possible:
- Fellowships: Addresses early-career scientists, which seek a time-limited employment at FAIR (2 year with the possibility to extend for 1 additional year). Up to 5 fellowships per year are expected to be granted.
- Associates: Addresses mid-career and senior scientists with a position at a university or an institute in a partner country, who intend spending a prolonged period at FAIR (between 3 months and 1 year). The number of grants will depend on the excellence of applicants.
Candidates will be required to work on research topics relevant for FAIR. The programme offers successful candidates the opportunity to follow and contribute to experimental or theoretical research projects at FAIR.
The Fellow programme is open to applicants from all scientific and technological disciplines relevant for FAIR. They must be early-career scientists (a few years after their PhD), and must provide at least one of the reference letters from an institution in a FAIR partner country which contributes its share to the FAIR commissioning/operation costs.
The Associate programme is open to applicants from all scientific and technological disciplines relevant for FAIR (including accelerator and ASIC development, artificial intelligence, information technology). They must be mid-career or senior scientists associated with an institution in a FAIR partner country which contributes its share to the FAIR commissioning/operation costs.
In both cases, a PhD in natural sciences and at least few years of work experience is required. This must include a solid experience in laboratories other than GSI/FAIR.
Applications have to be addressed to the Scientific Management of FAIR and should be send to the personnel department in electronic form. They should contain:
- a cover letter,
- a CV,
- a copy of the PhD certificate,
- a publication list including contributions to conferences and workshops.
For the Fellow programme they should contain in addition to the above:
- a research plan (about two to three pages in total) (tied in programme, no beam-time granted implicitly),
- and two or three references, which should be sent directly by authors to fellow(at)fair-center.eu; at least one reference letter from an institution in the partner countries of FAIR is expected.
For the Associate programme they should contain in addition to first four items:
- an outline of planned work at FAIR, including the proposed starting date and duration of the stay (about one page),
- a declaration of the home institution, that this stay would be approved,
- and the FAIR Home Institute Declaration (or self-declaration) from the employer, guaranteeing that the candidate would continue to be employed at its institution including social and health insurance for at least the duration of the stay at FAIR.
Applications are usually reviewed twice a year: in Spring and Autumn. For the next session, the deadline is set to the 15th of October 2025.
The selection committee will consist out of 6 to 8 internationally known experts active at FAIR and working on the FAIR relevant research topics. Usually the composition should be: one scientist to represent each of the FAIR pillars, plus one expert for IT and one for accelerators, and one further scientist nominated by the Scientific Management of FAIR. In exceptional cases, a single expert may cover several topics or two experts may be nominated for one topic.
The selection committee is expected to meet once or twice a year, provided applications have been received. Applications, which should be considered in a specific committee meeting, should be submitted at least four weeks before the meeting date. The FAIR Scientific Man-agement will nominate a head of the selection committee. The head of the selection committee will be responsible to organize the meetings of the committee and communicate decisions to the FAIR Management.
The selection committee will
- decide on basis of the submitted documents on the final list of accepted applicants.
The FAIR Scientific Management will inform the committee on potential strategic goals which should be followed (e.g., strengthening of a certain FAIR pillar).
Selection criteria will be:
- the excellence of the candidate,
- the experience of the candidate in laboratories other than GSI/FAIR,
- the originality and uniqueness of the research project,
- the strategic importance for FAIR.
Applicants will be informed via e-mail of the outcome of the evaluation. In general, the earliest start of the Fellowship contract is three months after the committee meeting. Selected Fellows are expected to start their work within one year after the approval of their application. For As-sociates the starting dates will be negotiated between the home institution and FAIR.
A successful Fellowship candidate will by employed or receive a stipend by FAIR according to the national/local rules and tariffs including social security. Fellows will work within an organizational unit at GSI/FAIR which agreed to host the research activity. A single payment for the relocation within the legal boundaries is offered to new Fellows. For the running costs (travels, office equipment etc) a budget of up to 10,000 Euro per annum is foreseen.
A successful Associate candidate will receive funding from FAIR depending on the negotiation between the home institution and FAIR, but not exceeding salaries of a comparable full GSI/FAIR position. FAIR will not cover any social or health insurance costs for Associates.
Currently supported scientists
FAIR Associates
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Wolfram Korten
Start date: Summer 2026.
Research Director and CEA Fellow
Dr. Wolfram Korten completed his doctorate at Heidelberg University and worked as Postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as GSI fellow at the Niels Bohr Institute. He pursued his habilitation to lecture physics at Bonn University, before taking a researcher position with the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). Since 2013, he has been nominated “Directeur de Recherche” at CEA and since 2022 a CEA Fellow.
His field of interest is the structure of the atomic nucleus with an emphasis on nuclear shape properties. For this work high-resolution in-flight gamma-ray spectroscopy is applied using radioactive ions beams in all energy domains, from relativistic energies available for example at GSI/FAIR down to the Coulomb barrier regime available at GANIL or CERN-ISOLDE. More recently, he has also initiated a program to study millisecond isomers at the GSI experimental storage ring (ESR) in order to search for the elusive nuclear two-photon decay using combined Schottky and Isochronous Mass Spectrometry (S+IMS). In future this newly develop technique will allow to also search for other “exotic” nuclear decay modes.
FAIR Fellows
Dr. Phillip Imgram
Start date: 1.08.2025
Dr. Phillip Imgram works in the field of laser spectroscopy of radioactive isotopes. He completed his Ph.D. at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 2022 in the group of Prof. Wilfried Nörtershäuser with his thesis “High-precision collinear laser spectroscopy of 12C4+”. Here, he implemented an electron beam ion source at the COALA beamline at the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Darmstadt to produce He-like carbon ions to perform collinear laser spectroscopy with them. It allowed to accurately test modern atomic structure calculations and to explore the possibility to extract an absolute nuclear charge radius purely from those optical measurements and corresponding atomic theory. Afterwards, he continued research as a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven in the group of Prof. Ruben de Groote. There, he established a new laboratory with a new ultra-high vacuum beamline for two new experiments, one focusing on collinear laser spectroscopy of ions
ejected from a multi-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer, and a second one targeting the deceleration, trapping and laser cooling of fast-ion beams. He designed, constructed and commissioned the full apparatus during his time there and demonstrated the feasibility of both approaches.
In the framework of the FAIR fellowship, he works on his project of “Collinear laser spectroscopy at the Super-FRS’ Cryogenic Gas Cell as an early LASPEC realization at FAIR”, which aims to perform collinear laser spectroscopy of radioactive isotopes at FAIR already before the completion of the experimental hall for low-energy experiments to take place after 2032.