Research Associate, Research Scientist

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Western Washington University, with over 15,000 students in seven colleges and the graduate school, is nationally recognized for its educational programs, students and faculty. The campus is located in Bellingham, Washington, a coastal community of 90,000 overlooking Bellingham Bay, the San Juan Islands and the North Cascades Mountain range. The city lies 90 miles north of Seattle and 60 miles south of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Western has additional sites in Anacortes, Bremerton, Everett, Port Angeles, and Poulsbo. Western is recognized nationally for its successes, such as being named one of the top public master's-granting institutions in the Pacific Northwest for 25 years in a row by U.S. News & World Report.

Western Washington University is committed to achieving excellence through advancing inclusive success, increasing our Washington impact, and focusing on transformational education grounded in the liberal arts and sciences and based on innovative scholarship, research, and creative activity. Western's greatest strength is the outstanding students, faculty, staff, and alumni/ae who make up its community. Western supports an inclusive governance structure for all and provides a learning and working environment in which everyone can thrive.

In pursuit of this excellence, individual employees are expected to establish and maintain productive and effective inclusive working relationships amongst diverse populations including staff, faculty, administration, student, and external constituents. Further, individual employees are expected to have the ability to operationalize sustainability concepts (economic, societal, environmental) into all aspects of performing their job duties.

The Engineering and Design Department supports Western's mission , which states that together with our students, staff, and faculty, we are committed to making a positive impact in the state and the world with a shared focus on academic excellence and inclusive achievement. We encourage applications from women, people of color, people with disabilities, veterans, and other candidates from underrepresented backgrounds and with diverse experiences interested in this opportunity.

This research position in the Engineering and Design Department supports the mission of rigorous research opportunities for students with hands-on engineering experience. This position manages grant based and industry-partnered research projects in the Polymer Materials Engineering program focused on materials development and characterization in areas such as advanced composites, thermoplastics processing, additive manufacturing and sustainable materials. The primary activities of this position include: development of novel research methods using experimental design to measure properties of materials and performance of systems;

implementing research methods to accomplish research objectives; verifying research methods are meeting research goals; analyzing experimental data; supervising research students; providing technical support to research staff and students; and communicating to internal and external stakeholders through technical reports, papers and presentations. This research is conducted in several labs in the Engineering and Design Department and shared research spaces on campus, and involves utilization of related equipment and processes.

This position is responsible for ensuring a positive student research experience as well as the research outcomes, and supporting the Polymer Materials Engineering research classes – PME 495 (Directed Research in Polymer Materials Engineering) and PME 491-493 (the PME Capstone Project Series) when appropriate.

• Perform literature reviews to determine current state of the art
• Exercise independent judgement…