Description

Salary: $20-$29 per hour

Status: Part Time

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.

Research Title:

Community Resilience Systems Modeling

The work will entail: 

The PREP Research Associate will conduct collaborative research with researchers in the Community Resilience Group in the Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).  Under the Community Resilience Program, it is proposed that the PREP participant conduct research on the project entitled Development of a First-Generation Community-Resilience Systems Model.  Under this project, the PREP participant will contribute to the (NIST) Alternatives for Resilient Communities (NIST ARC) model that is in ongoing development.  NIST ARC facilitates exploration of alternative solutions for increasing a community's resilience to natural hazards such as floods, tornados, and earthquakes. 

Within NIST ARC, optimization-based models provide the ability to efficiently search for alternatives that can meet community-specified objectives and constraints to support the decision-making process. Identifying alternatives that meet a community's objectives and constraints is challenging given the large scale of the relevant physical, social and economic systems (including, for example, buildings, critical infrastructure, businesses, schools, and hospitals), the interdependencies between these systems, stochastic aspects (e.g., related to hazard events, component failure), interactions of the mitigation/preparedness decisions and event-related decisions, and the large set of decision-makers and stakeholders in the decision-making process.

The associate will apply the optimization modeling framework to new systems or hazards, including coastal hazards, not currently incorporated into NIST ARC, and add to the functionality of the tool.  The associate will develop case studies, which will involve developing new data, identifying and applying suitable methods.  The new work will be integrated into the model through collaboration with the other developers.  In addition, the associate will have the opportunity to collaborate with a community subject to coastal hazards to improve resilience in practice.

Further, the PREP participant will disseminate their research through conferences and submission of peer-reviewed journal articles.

Key responsibilities will include but are not limited to:

• Developing optimization models to solve problems of relevance to community resilience

§  Presenting results at internal meetings, at conferences, and occasional meetings with external stakeholders.

§  Ensuring that results, protocols, software, and documentation have been archived or otherwise transmitted to the larger organization.

§  Publishing peer-reviewed journal articles on the collaborative research

Requirements

§  A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

§  Coursework in civil engineering systems analysis/optimization, or computational algorithms

§  Familiarity with multiple computer languages, including Python.

§  Ability to develop prototypes of tools needed to analyze data.

§  Strong oral and written communication skills.

Application Instructions

Please upload the following with your application:

-         CV/Resume

*Please limit C.V to 3 pages only and ONLY include a valid email address for your contact info. Your resume will not be considered if the following information is included on your CV/resume.

-         Self portraits

-         Phone number

-         Home address/Country

-         Citizenship status

-         Languages spoken

-         Sex/Gender

Privacy Act Statement

Authority:  15 U.S.C. § 278g-1(e)(1) and (e)(3) and 15 U.S.C. § 272(b) and (c)

Purpose:  The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) hosts the  Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) which is designed to provide valuable laboratory experience and financial assistance to undergraduates, post-bachelor's degree holders, graduate students, master's degree holders, postdocs, and faculty.  

PREP is a 5-year cooperative agreement between NIST laboratories and participating PREP Universities to establish a collaborative research relationship between NIST and U.S. institutions of higher education in the following disciplines including (but may not be limited to) biochemistry, biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, electronics, materials science, mathematics, nanoscale science, neutron science, physical science, physics, and statistics. This collection of information is needed to facilitate administrative functions of the PREP Program.

Routine Uses:  NIST will use the information collected to perform the requisite reviews of the applications to determine eligibility, and to meet programmatic requirements. Disclosure of this information is also subject to all the published routine uses as identified in the Privacy Act System of Records Notices:  NIST-1: NIST Associates. 

Disclosure:  Furnishing this information is voluntary. When you submit the form, you are indicating your voluntary consent for NIST to use of the information you submit for the purpose stated.