PhD in AI-Supported Resilience Assessment of Climate-Neutral Transport Infrastructure ETH Zurich in Switzerland

ETH Zurich’s Chair of Infrastructure Management is advertising a PhD position in AI-supported resilience assessment of climate-neutral transport infrastructure.

The doctoral project is embedded in the EU Horizon SHIFTIN consortium and focuses on developing stress-testing and surrogate-modelling methods for assessing the resilience of interdependent transport infrastructure systems under climate-related and multi-hazard scenarios. The research connects civil engineering, computer science, environmental science, statistics, and mathematics, with practical applications in design, retrofit, maintenance, and recovery planning at asset, corridor, and network scales.

The project context includes roads, railways, and ports, and aims to support climate-neutral, resilient, and biodiversity-friendly infrastructure by 2050. The wider SHIFTIN programme combines circular low-carbon materials, nature-based solutions, monitoring technologies, digital decision-support tools, and a digital twin platform. The PhD student will contribute to AI-supported analytics, network-based and agent-based simulation, uncertainty analysis, explainability, and integration with monitoring and digital-twin data.

Eligibility: applicants should hold a Master’s degree in civil engineering, transport engineering, infrastructure systems, environmental engineering, computational engineering, data science, or a closely related field. Strong quantitative and programming skills are expected, preferably in Python. Experience with machine learning, statistical modelling, simulation, optimisation, data analysis, or geospatial/network analysis is desirable. Excellent English is required; German or another European language is an advantage but not mandatory.

Funding and terms: this is a full-time PhD position at ETH Zurich within a funded EU Horizon project. The post is fixed-term; no stipend amount is stated in the announcement.

Application: apply online via ETH Zurich’s portal by 31 July 2026. Required documents include a motivation letter, CV, transcripts, degree certificates, and optionally a Master’s thesis or writing sample. Applications by email or post are not accepted. Questions about the position should be sent to Nathalie Dietrich at [email protected].