The University Research Priority Program (URPP) on “Social Networks” is one of the eight new programs at the University of Zurich starting in 2013. The URPP is a research excellence program. It is interdisciplinary, cross-faculty and is strongly supporting the academic career development of our researchers. For our subprojects on firm and consumer networks, we offer several open positions at different levels. Those positions will closely work together with the Chair for Marketing and Market Research, which is part of the Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and IT at the University of Zurich. We focus on quantitative empirical market research in the area of marketing.
From January 1st 2013 or by arrangement we offer
Research Associate positions (PhD candidates) and
Senior Research Associates positions (Postdocs).
Your responsibilities are...
- to develop, to manage and to publish research projects,
- to teach one class on a network related topic in English,
- to collaborate in administrative tasks.
We are looking for an open minded personality with the following abilities:
- excellent degree (MA/diploma or PhD) in business administration, economics, business or computational mathematics, business or computational physics, or computer science with focus on econometrics or statistical physics,
- substantial experience in quantitative empirical data analysis (econometric modeling and/or social network analysis) and first experience in dealing with “big data” projects,
- good commands and/or willingness to develop thorough knowledge of the statistical program R (and packages such as igraph, sna or Rsiena), Gephi and/or UCINet
- good commands and/or willingness to develop knowledge in C/C++, Java or Python,
- very good command of English (oral and written),
- motivation to publish the research results in international high-quality journals,
- excellent communication skills,
- curiosity, motivation, inquisitiveness, tenacity and discipline,
- self-reliance, reliability, integrity, creativity and commitment.
We offer...
- a team with strong emphasis on quantitative research,
- an opportunity to complete a PhD or to conduct Postdoc research projects in the core areas of the chair’s research activities,
- a wide-ranging, independent and interesting work as part of a dynamic team in a positive working atmosphere,
- a thorough career development program (management by objectives, international summer schools, conferences, etc.),
- a well-equipped workspace in an excellent university with international reputation,
- an appropriate salary,
- a good work-life balance.
Applications should include a pdf with a letter of motivation (1 page), a detailed CV, grades of all university courses taken (transcripts), letters of reference, and a list of publications (if existing). Please submit the corresponding documents by October 15th 2012 by email to
market-research@business.uzh.ch (Title: Application research associate – URPP#2).
