The Earth Sciences institute of Orléans (ISTO) is a joint research unit between University of Orléans, CNRS and BRGM, with 130 people, including 45 research staffs from university, CNRS and BRGM, 35 technical and administrative support staff, about 5-10 post-docs and 40 PhD students. The surficial environments studied by the laboratory range from peatlands to polluted soils, and include aquifers, rivers and lakes. Particular emphasis is placed on speciation and flux characterization at different scales and at the interfaces between various compartments, by coupling fieldwork, experimentation, in-situ and ex-situ multi-scale characterization, as well as stochastic or mechanistic (reactive transport) modeling.

The candidate must be able to strengthen the laboratory scientific activity, by providing the group with innovative characterization and modeling methods for the study of the evolution of the systems of interest, preferably on a large scale (e.g. on-site measurements, watershed-soil-aquifer continuum). Particular interest will be given to projects focused on the development of markers (inorganic and / or organic geochemical, isotopic, etc.) and/or on the development of predictive modeling method (e.g. reactive transport, stochastic or mechanistic methods, possibly assisted by Artificial Intelligence). Because the large-scale evolution of surficial systems is sometimes controlled by very localized biogeochemical processes (hot-spots), candidates proposing multi-scale characterization / experimentation / modeling developments are also welcome. Regardless of research focus area, enthusiasm for interdisciplinary research and for cultivation of collaborations is essential to this position.

In parallel, it is strongly expected a contribution of the successful candidate to active-learning courses to develop cooperative questioning, problem solving, analytical reasoning and critical thinking. The successful candidate must also be comfortable in teaching our undergraduate classes in various courses, which will not be always directly related to the core of his/her expertise. Their expertise regarding hydrogeochemistry will be critical for courses on Earth surface envelopes, sedimentary basins and petrology, critical zone, Soil science, etc. Finally, they will play an active role to supervise the research projects of graduate students, on topics close to his/her expertise. Annual teaching duties amount to 192 h, with possibly field teaching periods.

 The research of the successful candidate will benefit from the national and regional “Excellence” funds of the laboratory, i.e. the LabEx VOLTAIRE (http://labex-voltaire.prod.lamp.cnrs.fr/), and PIVOTS (Région Centre – Europe; https://www.plateformes-pivots.eu/) with two experimental platforms dedicated to the sol-aquifer continuum in polluted area (O_ZNS) and to the soil-atmosphere exchanges (PESAt). They will also benefit from the scientific activity of two national observatories (https://www.sno-tourbieres.cnrs.fr; http://www.sokarst.org/).