Postdoctoral Researcher in sediment-water exchange (24 months)
The department of Ocean Systems (OCS) at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) is looking for a highly motivated and proactive postdoctoral researcher (2 years) with a background in (bio)geochemistry/ecology to investigate the impact of offshore wind farms on nutrient fluxes and ecological functioning in the North Sea. The research is part of the larger NWA-ORC ‘NO-REGRETS’ project. The postdoc will be employed and based at NIOZ (Texel, the Netherlands).
THE PROJECT
NO-REGRETS (North Sea Renewable Energy: Gaining the Required Ecological Knowledge for the Transition) is a six-year (2025-2031) project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO-NWA ORC) examines the ecological and economic trade-offs of upscaling offshore wind farms (OWFs) in the context of climate change and the ongoing food and nature transitions in the North Sea. The project has an interdisciplinary consortium of world-class expertise from eight Dutch Universities, five Research Institutes and relevant societal stakeholders that play a major role in research and management of the North Sea. The six-year program (2025-2031) advances knowledge on potential impacts of OWFs on ocean currents, suspended sediments, microscopic plankton, various life stages of fishes, seabed composition, seafloor organisms, marine mammals, and sea birds. Economic analyses explore changes in the value of marine fisheries and other ocean assets. Co-developed with stakeholders, NO-REGRETS will create tools allowing policymakers, industries and other stakeholders to gauge and optimise the ecological and bioeconomic consequences of North Sea.
YOUR ROLE
Within the NO-REGRETS project, you explore the impact of OWFs on the biogeochemical functioning of the seafloor, specifically its role in nutrient cycling and bioavailability as foundation of the food web. The OCS department is looking for an enthusiastic and independent postdoc to carry out sea-going field work and laboratory analyses. You will collect sediment cores inside and outside of wind farms and determine the chemistry as well as the exchange of essential elements between the sediment and the water. In addition you will perform in situ measurements with benthic landers to study processes (e.g., respiration, carbon and nutrient fluxes) at the sediment water interface. You will closely cooperate with modelers in NO-REGRETS, combining results with modeling efforts to evaluate the impact of wind farms on the ecosystem from the small to the system-wide scale. You should be comfortable with chemical lab work and the chemical and physical concepts underlying nutrient cycling and transport. The position will start in spring 2026 and will run for 24 months.
THE INSTITUTE
NWO-NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research is the Dutch national oceanographic institute and principally performs academically excellent multidisciplinary, fundamental, and frontier applied marine research addressing important scientific and societal questions pertinent to the functioning of the ocean and seas. NIOZ includes the National Marine research Facilities (NMF) department that operates a fleet of research vessels and the national pool of large seagoing equipment, and supports excellence in multidisciplinary marine research, education, and policy development.
THE DEPARTMENT
At OCS, we investigate the ocean’s vital role in climate and biodiversity, from equator to pole, shelf to deep sea, and past to present. The ocean is a critical regulator of global climate, being the largest reservoir of CO2 and heat, while also harboring poorly understood but crucial, extensive, and extremely rich ecosystems, many of which are very fragile and under various human pressures. We use experimental, analytical, modeling, and observational approaches, when possible on location, to enhance our fundamental understanding of the chemical, biological, and physical processes in our ocean.
