Postdoctoral Research Associate

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Notre Dame, IN, United States

The University of Notre Dame is more than a workplace! It is a vibrant, mission‑driven community rooted in a tradition of excellence and inspired by its Catholic character. It fosters an environment of care that nurtures the whole person—mind, body, and spirit—and offers opportunities to grow a career while contributing to the community and the world.

Notre Dame invites applications for a cohort of up to three Postdoctoral Research Fellows to join a dynamic, interdisciplinary team. The work focuses on a spatially explicit, contextually informed, justice‑centered assessment of strategies and resources—power, water, land, health, and workforce infrastructure—necessary to inform decision‑making about current and future data centers in Indiana and the Midwest. The role involves developing a framework for capturing complex, multidimensional impacts on communities, assessing policies at local, state, and national levels, and integrating social, technical, economic, and environmental implications for sustainable data center growth.

Early activities will include, but are not limited to:

• Using large language models and AI techniques to support data collection, synthesis, analysis, and construction of a modeling platform for key resource demands, including electricity, water, land, and physical infrastructure.
• Collecting, analyzing, and modeling social, economic, workforce, and health considerations with emphasis on distributional effects, justice, and participatory methods.
• Conducting policy analysis at local, state, and federal levels.

• Collaborate with faculty to design and carry out interdisciplinary research central to the integrated assessment of hyperscale data center development in the Midwest.
• Develop analytical frameworks for evaluating environmental, technical, economic, social, and policy dimensions of data centers.
• Create accessible models and decision‑support tools that enable holistic understanding of tradeoffs across sectors for future scenario planning.
• Co‑author and support high‑impact interdisciplinary research publications in leading sustainability and environmental science journals.
• Engage in collaborative grant writing and proposal development to sustain and expand the cohort’s research initiatives.

• Ph.D. in hand by the starting date in a relevant field (engineering, environmental science, hydrology, geography, economics, public policy, data science, or interdisciplinary). Interdisciplinary degrees are welcome.
• Demonstrated ability to lead research in at least one critical domain of the larger research effort.
• Strong analytical and methodological expertise with a record of applying those methods to complex, real‑world problems.
• A strong publication record in a field directly relevant to the envisioned program.
• Excellent communication skills and an ability to work collaboratively with researchers from a wide range of disciplines.

The University of Notre Dame seeks to attract, develop, and retain the highest quality faculty, staff, and administration. It is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or age. Notre Dame prohibits discrimination against veterans or disabled qualified individuals and complies with 41 CFR 60‑741.5(a) and 41 CFR 60‑300.5(a).

We strongly encourage applications from candidates attracted to a university with a Catholic identity.