Associate Resreach Scientist; PREP

General Description

Salary: $82,000-$82,000 a year

PREP Research Associate

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards (NIST) Professional Research Experience (PREP) program, which allows research staff to collaborate with academic institutions on projects of mutual interest. Employees will perform technical work that underpins the scientific research of the collaboration.

The project focuses on the development and application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques in structural wind engineering, including:

• Evaluating the effects of complex topography on wind loads on structures.
• Quantifying uncertainties in wind loads on tall buildings estimated by CFD techniques.
• Developing improved calculation methods and standard provisions for topographic effects on wind loads.
• Developing and applying state-of-the-art computational techniques for simulation of flow around tall buildings in complex terrain.
• Quantifying uncertainty in computational simulations.
• Comparing simulation results with wind tunnel and field measurements.
• Applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to wind engineering applications.
• All CFD code will be developed for implementation into the OpenFOAM software.

• Developing procedures for estimating topographic speedup effects on wind over complex terrain.
• Developing CFD modeling procedures for simulating wind flow around tall buildings surrounded by complex topography and/or urban environments, and implementing related codes in OpenFOAM.
• Performing numerical simulations and quantifying uncertainties in the simulation results.
• Analyzing simulation data and comparing them with measured data from wind tunnel tests.

• Ph.D. in Engineering, Physics, Applied Mathematics, or a related field.
• Prior research experience and contributions in structural engineering, wind engineering, Computational Fluid Dynamics, and scientific computing, including at least five peer‑reviewed journal papers on applications of Large Eddy Simulation methods in wind engineering.
• At least five years of experience with code development and maintenance using OpenFOAM CFD software.
• At least five years of experience in using high‑performance computing systems for massively parallel computational simulations.
• Strong programming and analytical skills for pre‑/post‑processing and analysis (e.g., Pointwise, Paraview, Tecplot, MATLAB, and Python).
• U.S. citizenship preferred.

The Johns Hopkins University is committed to equal opportunity for its faculty, staff, and students. The university does not discriminate on the basis of sex, gender, marital status, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status or other legally protected characteristic.

The successful candidate(s) for this position will be subject to a pre‑employment background check including education verification.