Post Doctorate RA - Chemical & Bio Processing

Job Title

Job Description

The successful candidate will:

• Conduct independent research and contribute to multidisciplinary team assignments involving catalysis and renewable-fuels process development.
• Design, construct, modify, and safely operate laboratory-scale batch and continuous-flow reactor systems.
• Synthesize and characterize heterogeneous catalysts and evaluate their performance for reactions involving biomass-derived intermediates, waste-derived feed stocks, carbon dioxide, or other renewable carbon sources.
• Perform rigorous kinetic measurements and investigate reaction mechanisms, catalyst structure–performance relationships, and catalyst deactivation.
• Apply AI/ML methods to scientific and engineering problems, including catalyst formulation, reaction optimization, experimental selection, pathway discovery, and process modeling.
• Develop reproducible workflows and data pipelines that integrate catalyst synthesis, characterization, reaction testing, and product analytics.
• Apply approaches such as Bayesian optimization, active learning, uncertainty quantification, surrogate modeling, or digital twins to accelerate experimental research and support scale-up decisions.
• Analyze complex experimental datasets using statistical, computational, and mechanistic modeling methods.
• Collaborate with experimental researchers, computational chemists, data scientists, and external research partners.
• Prepare technical reports, peer-reviewed manuscripts, presentations, and other project deliverables.
• Present research results at technical conferences, sponsor meetings, and project or program reviews.
• Contribute to the development of research proposals, intellectual property, and new technical capabilities.
• Maintain a strong commitment to safe, rigorous, and reproducible laboratory research.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Candidates must have received a PhD within the past five years (60 months) or within the next 8 months from an accredited college or university.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, Materials Science, Data Science, Computational Science, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated experience conducting independent scientific or engineering research.
• Strong record of peer-reviewed publications and technical presentations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work effectively within multidisciplinary research teams.
• Experience with heterogeneous catalysis, catalyst synthesis, reaction engineering, or biomass conversion.
• Hands-on experience operating laboratory-scale batch or continuous-flow catalytic reactor systems.
• Experience measuring catalytic performance, reaction kinetics, selectivity, and catalyst stability.
• Familiarity with biomass-derived intermediates, oxygenates, biocrudes, waste-derived feed stocks, or catalytic upgrading pathways to fuels and chemicals.
• Experience applying AI/ML methods to chemistry, catalysis, materials science, or chemical engineering problems.
• Proficiency in Python or another programming language used for scientific data processing, modeling, and visualization.
• Experience with Bayesian optimization, active learning, machine learning, mechanistic modeling, uncertainty quantification, or automated experimentation.
• Experience developing reproducible data workflows or integrating experimental and computational datasets.
• Familiarity with spectroscopic or analytical techniques such as FTIR, NMR, GC, GC-MS, LC, or related methods.
• Knowledge of reaction kinetics, transport phenomena, catalyst deactivation, and reactor-scale behavior.
• Experience using large language models, agentic workflows, or generative AI to support literature analysis, hypothesis generation, data interpretation, or research automation.
• Demonstrated interest in translating fundamental scientific understanding into scalable and deployable chemical processes.

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