Doctoral student in Resilient and Equitable Mobility Systems

Doctoral Student in Resilient and Equitable Mobility Systems

How do mobility systems respond when everyday travel is disrupted? Who loses access, where, for how long, and how can planning reduce these impacts?

We are looking for a Doctoral student in Complex Mobility Systems. The position is part of a Swedish Research Council-funded project developing dynamic synthetic populations and mobility digital twins for resilient and equitable transport planning. The project combines agent-based modelling, large-scale mobility data, transport networks, generative modelling, resilience indicators, and equity analysis.

This doctoral student position is particularly suitable for a candidate who wants to develop strong theoretical and computational expertise while working on real-world problems in mobility, cities, resilience, and sustainability.

The candidate will be based at the Division of Physical Resource Theory at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. With around 50 staff members, including faculty and doctoral students from engineering, natural sciences, and social sciences, the division promotes challenge-driven, multidisciplinary research and offers courses linked to its research areas. Our group, STEAM – Sustainable Transport, Energy Analytics and Modelling, studies the transformation of transport and energy systems using data-driven, computational and policy-relevant approaches.

We work at the intersection of mobility systems, energy systems, electrification, resilience, equity and sustainability, combining large-scale empirical data, modelling, simulation and systems analysis.

In Energy, Environment, and Systems PhD program, you will learn the use of techniques and analytical methods regarding the environment, energy, nature and society. The graduate school offers different specializations, Energy Conversion, Industrial Energy Systems, Energy and Material Systems, Physical Resource Theory, Environmental Systems Analysis and Complex Systems.

The graduate school is organised within the Departments of Environmental and Energy Sciences and Technology Management and Economics.

The position is connected to the DYnamic populatio

Ns for resilient And equitable MObility systems (DYNAMO) project. The project develops next-generation synthetic populations that are dynamic, scenario-conditioned and suitable for stress-testing mobility systems under disruptions. The work combines mobile phone data, census and urban data, activity-based and agent-based modelling, generative sequence models, transport networks, digital twins, resilience indicators and equity-sensitive analysis. The project explicitly seeks to move beyond static "average-day" demand modelling towards dynamic, behaviourally rich and policy-relevant simulations of how different groups adapt under changing conditions.

The project is carried out in collaboration with the department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU, Denmark) and Universidad del Desarrollo / ISI Foundation (Chile/Italy), contributing expertise in human mobility modelling, resilience science, and empirical disruption analysis using large-scale mobile phone data from Chile.

The successful candidate will be expected to contribute intellectually to the theoretical development of the project. We are particularly interested in candidates whose background can help us connect empirical mobility data and computational modelling with theories of complex systems, network dynamics, resilience, disruption response, adaptation, inequality, or urban systems.

A master's degree corresponding to at least 240 higher education credits, or equivalent, in a relevant field such as engineering, applied mathematics, physics, computer science, data science, complex systems, transport systems, urban science, geography, urban planning, computational social science, or a related field.

Strong quantitative, analytical, computational, or theoretical training relevant to the research topic.

Meritorious educational qualifications:

Coursework or thesis work in complex…