Postdoctoral Researcher Infrastructure Resilience

The Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering Department at the University of Kansas is seeking two postdoctoral researchers with education and experience related to equity-driven infrastructure resilience. The positions are full-time and on-site. The initial appointment would be for one year with the possibility of renewal subject to department needs and funding availability.

Successful candidates will serve as postdoctoral researchers for the NSF-funded RII Track I EPSCoR project titled, Adaptive and Resilient Infrastructures Driven by Social Equity (ARISE), conducting research on risk and resilience assessment in the face of natural hazards, and support multi-disciplinary research on community resilience. Both post-doctoral researchers will focus on integrating socio-economic aspects into infrastructure network modeling and work under the supervision of Dr. Elaina Sutley. These postdoctoral researchers will play an important role in the project on establishing a framework for measuring social equity, employing the community capital framework to establish community resilience metrics, integrating social, physical, and economic elements into a stochastic hetero-functional graph, and collaborating on the design and administration of surveys to collect and analyze data for informing and/or validating the models. The post-doctoral researchers will develop computational workflows and incorporate resilience assessment algorithms into a decision support platform using Jupyter notebooks. The work will include development and use of virtual community resilience testbeds. For further details on the research, scope and position expectations, please get in touch with Dr. Elaina Sutley.

50% - Perform research for the purpose of enhancing and developing research competencies in the technical areas described above, focusing on either graph models or surveying methods and data analysis related to equitable infrastructure resilience. Participate in planning, designing and conducting highly technical and complex research projects under the direction of a supervisor or independently

30% - Contribute to the development of research documentation for publication and/or prepare technical reports, journal papers, and/or records.

10% - Contribute to the development, preparation and submission of externally funded proposals related to the research program.

10% - Mentor undergraduate and graduate students.

Additional information about the project can be found at https://nsfepscor.ku.edu/arise-researchers/. Additional information on KU's Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering is found at http://ceae.ku.edu. The University of Kansas was established in 1866, is one of just 65 invited members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), and is the state's flagship university. The University of Kansas is located in Lawrence, Kansas, which has been ranked as the 6th best college towns in the United States (https://livability.com/top-10/college/10-best-college-towns/2019/ks/lawrence).

This position is on-site with the possibility of some remote work dependent on the mutual agreement of the supervisor, department, and selected candidate.

There are two preferred start dates for these positions, March 15, 2025 and May 15, 2025. Final start date to be determined between final candidate and supervisor.

1. Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Structural Engineering, Computer Science, or closely related field.
2. Demonstrated record of research, including publications and presentations, on the topic of infrastructure resilience, which may include functionality, virtual testbeds, the community capitals framework, social equity and/or social vulnerability utilizing network modeling, machine learning, data science and/or human subjects surveying methods as evidenced in application materials.

NOTE: To be appointed at the Postdoctoral Researcher title, it is necessary to have the PhD conferred at the time of hire. Appointments made without a diploma or certified transcript indicating an earned doctorate are conditional hires and are appointed on an interim basis, not to exceed 6 months. Upon degree verification, the appointment will be extended to its full duration.

A complete online application includes:

1. Cover letter describing how the required and preferred qualifications are met.
2. CV/Resume
3. Three professional references

Application review begins February 10, 2025, and will continue until a qualified pool of applicants is received.

Dr. Elaina Sutley
enjsutley@ku.edu

$65,000

M-F 8-5

Monday February 10, 2025

Saturday March 15, 2025