Associate Research Scientist; PREP

PREP Research Associate

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards (NIST) Professional Research Experience (PREP) program. NIST recognizes that its research staff may wish to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest, thus requires that such institutions must be the recipient of a PREP award. The PREP program requires staff from a wide range of backgrounds to work on scientific research in many areas.

Employees in this position will perform technical work that underpins the scientific research of the collaboration. Research

Title:

Accelerated Corrosion Studies of Reinforced Concrete

The Infrastructure Materials Group (IMG) is seeking a highly motivated Research Associate to be a part of the Next-Generation Building Standards initiative within NIST.

Degradation of reinforced concrete due to embedded steel corrosion remains a monumental challenge, with direct and indirect costs accounting for approximately 6% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. Current building codes, testing standards, and common-practice heuristics, such as diffusion coefficient, depth of cover, and chloride per unit mass of cement, are inadequate for assessing the complex environmental factors and novel binder chemistries that most strongly affect structural service life.

To address this, the IMG "Assessing Steel Corrosion Risk in Innovative Cement Concretes" project aims to integrate advanced electrochemical characterization with species-transport modeling. We are seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher with academic training and experience in corrosion science to develop new metrology standards specific to reinforced concrete structures, which are often in unsaturated conditions. The selected candidate will focus on measuring the precise rates of corrosion initiation and progression, ultimately providing the foundational data needed to build high-fidelity service-life and fragility models for reinforced concrete structures.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology to enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. Located in Gaithersburg, Maryland, NIST offers a collaborative, interdisciplinary culture where you will work alongside some of the world's leading scientists and engineers to solve critical national challenges.

IMG at NIST serves as an important resource for developing science-based tools and measurement standards to enhance the resilience and sustainability of the nation's physical infrastructure. As part of the Engineering Laboratory, the IMG focuses on predicting the service life of infrastructure components under real-world and accelerated weathering conditions.

We are specifically targeting a researcher with a rigorous background in developing accelerated corrosion studies to inform long-term modeling and prediction of degradation. The ideal candidate does not just run standard tests; they understand the thermodynamic mechanisms that drive durability and those that drive corrosion initiation and propagation. You should be comfortable moving between the wet lab (extracting and analyzing pore solutions) and the computer (modeling phase assemblages and quantifying uncertainty).

Experience with cement pore solution chemistry and concrete transport properties, such as determining the Formation Factor using XRF for pore solution analysis or modeling hydration kinetics using GEMS/PHREEQC, is a critical skill needed for this position. Experience designing and conducting advanced electrochemical assessments of reinforcement steel to measure corrosion initiation and progression rates under varied solution properties and environmental conditions are required.

• Advance Measurement Science: Develop and validate novel test methods for characterizing alternative cementitious materials, with a specific focus on linking microstructural development to macro‑scale transport properties.
• Pore Solution Characterization: Lead efforts to standardize X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) techniques for the elemental analysis of concrete pore solutions, establishing protocols for characterizing accuracy and repeatability.
• Durability Modeling: Apply thermodynamic modeling to predict phase changes (e.g., carbonation, chloride binding) in Type IL and CSA cements under varying climate scenarios. Corrosion…