Associate Research Scientist; PREP

General Description

Salary: $85 an hour

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.

A senior researcher or a faculty member is sought for a position in Structural Engineering to support the development and implementation of a new nonstructural component fragility and consequence database for performance-based hazard assessments of buildings. NIST has recently developed a relational database focusing on nonstructural elements in buildings, NED (Nonstructural Element Database), which collects information from experimental, analytical, and historic performance observations into seismic fragilities and consequence models to support building‑specific seismic performance research and assessments, refactoring and expanding upon the FEMA P‑58 database as the standard of practice for seismic risk assessment.

Currently, the project is still in its active development and does not yet have consequence models or data from historical events, but it has collected over 2500 experimental data points and compiled a fragility data set that includes and expands upon the full FEMA P‑58 nonstructural database. NIST will supplement its capacities with input from PREP Fellow experts in the areas of component damage consequence modeling and database schema design.

The PREP Fellow will work with NIST researchers to develop and implement a new consequence model data schema and consequence estimation procedures within the NED database. The work, to be completed in collaboration with NIST researchers and other external contractors, will be comprised of the following five major tasks: (1) review, refactoring and forward developing of the current database architecture and data schema, (2) development of a general consequence model database architecture and schema, and (3) implementation of new consequence models into the database, (4) back‑end and front‑end software development, and (5) documentation of developments and tools and dissemination in technical reports and professional conferences.

• Review the current design and data schema of the NED database, paying specific attention to missing data representations, duplicity in data design, points of unclarity, and capability to scale with new data and meet future use cases.
• Conceptualize and design a robust and scalable data schema to integrate consequence models into the NED architecture.
• Work closely with NIST researchers and external collaborators to iterate and improve upon the database design as well as support the implementation of the database.
• Direct development of the database tool and supporting database management software.
• Direct development and deployment of web‑based front‑end software tools to support direct user interaction with the database.
• Contributing to the publication of a NIST report and data repository documenting the database.

• U.S. citizenship is preferred.
• A Ph.D. in Civil Engineering with a focus on Structural Engineering or a related field.
• An excellent record of research, publications, and strong communication skills.
• A strong background in engineering, natural hazards, and probabilistic risk assessment including uncertainty quantification.
• More than 7 years of experience in software development.
• Experience in the development, application, and implementation of the FEMA P‑58 performance‑based assessment framework and associated fragility database.
• Experience in developing and deploying Python tools and libraries.
• Experience in SQL database development and the Django Python package.
• Experience developing and managing git repositories and deploying software to web‑based platforms.
• Experience…