Post-Doc Research Associate - AI Credible Climate Mitigation

Position: Post-Doc Research Associate - AI for Credible Climate Mitigation

Post-Doc Research Associate - AI for Credible Climate Mitigation

Position Title:

Post-Doc Research Associate - AI for Credible Climate Mitigation

Department: UNC Institute for the Environment (IE) – 635200

Location:

Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Position type:
Postdoctoral Scholar (Full‑Time Temporary)

Posting Open Date: 12/04/2025

Final date to receive applications: 01/15/2026

Salary Range: $68,000 - $72,000

Estimated Duration: 12 Months (initial) with possibility of extension

Primary Purpose Of Organizational Unit

The UNC Institute for the Environment (IE) has a multifaceted mission that includes strengthening environmental research capacity, partnering across UNC and beyond, fostering educational programs, engaging communities, and driving sustainability initiatives. The Data‑Driven Enviro Lab (DDL) is an interdisciplinary initiative that transforms large, messy datasets into actionable insights for climate policy and accountability. CLAIM – the Center for Climate Leadership and AI‑driven Integrity in Mitigation – advances the credible use of artificial intelligence, especially generative AI and LLMs, to accelerate climate mitigation while safeguarding integrity in climate commitments.

Position

Summary

This postdoctoral research associate will join CLAIM to develop, adapt, and evaluate LLM/genAI systems focused on climate mitigation intelligence for cities, regions, and non‑state actors. The role involves creating benchmarks, validating metrics, and ensuring systems are accurate, fair, and robust, while studying the real‑world impact of generative AI on climate policy and governance.

Responsibilities

• Develop, adapt, and evaluate LLM/genAI systems for climate mitigation intelligence, especially for tracking and assessing commitments and actions by cities, regions, and non‑state actors.
• Design and validate benchmarks, metrics, and auditing pipelines that test the accuracy, credibility, fairness, and robustness of LLM outputs related to climate targets, disclosures, and policy claims.
• Rigorously test genAI/ML models against misinformation, disinformation, and green washing, including stress‑testing models under adversarial, low‑resource, and multilingual settings.
• Study how generative AI shapes real‑world climate behavior, including impacts on corporate and subnational mitigation planning, transparency, and accountability.
• Contribute to CLAIM’s broader mission: data collection, methodological innovation, open tools, papers, and policy‑facing outputs that improve climate commitment integrity.

Minimum Education And Experience Requirements

PhD in Computer Science, Computing, Statistics or Data Science, or related disciplines.

Required Qualifications , Competencies, And Experience

• PhD in Computer Science, Computing, Statistics or Data Science, or related disciplines.
• Hands‑on experience training, fine‑tuning, or adapting LLMs/ generative AI models (e.g., instruction tuning, domain adaptation, RAG pipelines), with evidence in publications, open‑source code, or deployed tools.
• Strong experience in LLM/genAI evaluation and benchmarking, including methods for factuality/hallucination testing, robustness, calibration, bias/fairness, and/or adversarial stress‑testing.
• Solid programming and ML/NLP engineering skills in Python and ideally modern deep‑learning stacks (e.g., PyTorch/JAX, Hugging Face/Transformers, vector databases, agentic/RAG tooling), with ability to build reproducible research pipelines.
• Working knowledge of climate change mitigation and environmental governance, including familiarity with climate commitments, emissions accounting, or policy/action tracking, and motivation to apply AI in this space.
• Able to think critically, proactively and work both independently and in an interdisciplinary team environment.

Preferred Qualifications , Competencies, And Experience

• Excellent organization and time management skills.

Special Instructions

For information on UNC Postdoctoral Benefits and Services .

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