Sustainability Research Analyst - Facilities & Services

Job Summary The Sustainability Research Analyst is responsible for facilitating research, teaching, and engagement between Facilities & Services (F&S) and academic units at the University of Illinois. This role focuses on research and student inquiries, providing scientific analysis for inclusion in grant applications, participating in educational classes and programs, and engaging with university research partners. Responsibilities include building internal and external partnerships, facilitating collaborative research projects, securing funding, implementing online educational resources, and working directly with students, faculty, staff, and community members.

The Sustainability Research Analyst will research and scientifically quantify safe and sustainable solutions to implement through F&S.

• Provide analysis and scientifically obtained data and best practices to researchers across the University of Illinois and peer R1 institutions nationally. This includes being the primary F&S contact for scientists, translational research, and teachers. This includes tracking requests, issues, and progress towards solutions, as well as researching and scientifically quantifying safe and sustainable solutions to implement through F&S.
• Serve as a co-instructor for the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) 190 Project Based Learning course. This includes participating in the weekly faculty team meetings, providing guidance and expertise on campus facilities and procedures to the 200+ students each year, and teaching student teams about project implementation principles and requirements.
• Mentor student teams through directly explaining project management protocols. Guide student researchers and provide scientific data, research protocols, and access to appropriate subject matter experts. Provide guidance for student capstone project(s), class inquiries, and research teams. Supervise and guide student employees.
• Research and complete data analysis regarding campus sustainability infrastructure and identify scientifically-based goals for campus sustainability plans that meet the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI) protocols. Present findings at conferences, seminars, and related stakeholder groups.
• Identify the appropriate F&S stakeholders by facilitating meetings with department heads at F&S and seeking leadership direction for appropriate stakeholders. Serve as a point of contact for the collaboration partner, regarding related funding and needs. Provide regular reporting on status and results. Provide strong customer service to the campus community members that are served by F&S.
• Manage the Bike at Illinois annual program. Administratively responsible for implementing program priorities, setting goals and objectives for student interns. Oversight of the bicycle programming and infrastructure fee (Bike Fee) projects, including all bicycle infrastructure improvement projects and seeking additional funding for bicycle infrastructure improvements.
• Serve as a guest lecturer for campus courses for topics related to Academic Collaborations with F&S, such as bioenergy topics, fleet transition topics, energy efficiency topics, clean energy topics, and more. This includes sharing results from research collaborations and data-driven sustainability solutions at relevant conferences.
• Promote and encourage interdisciplinary research initiatives with F&S. This includes spreading awareness of the existing programs for energy, transportation, green infrastructure, etc. Spreading awareness may include participating in campus-wide awareness events, hosting engagement events, and maintaining online information. Serve on campus committees related to research and engagement, such as the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) topical teams. Update related webpages, accordingly, including the iCAP Portal and the F&S Sustainability pages.
• Research sustainable transportation innovations, such as incorporating bio-binder in asphalts, biofuels for vehicles, self-healing concrete, and asphalt, using other scientifically-based solutions to reduce the university's carbon footprint from transportation infrastructure projects, and similar initiatives.
• Assist Transportation Demand Management (TDM) by helping to initiate transportation infrastructure projects (such as complete streets, permeable pavements, and electric vehicle infrastructure), ensuring their timely implementation, and…