Worcester Polytechnic Institute
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Post Doctoral Fellow (WUI Fire Emissions, Experiments, and Multiscale Modeling) Worcester Polytechnic Institute in United States
Degree Level
Postdoc
Field of study
Environmental Science
Funding
Salary: $55,000.00 per year; benefits package includes retirement match, wellness perks, tuition assistance, health insurance, life and long-term disability insurance, and retirement savings plans.
Country
United States
University
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
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About this position
This postdoctoral position at Worcester Polytechnic Institute sits in the Civil, Environmental, & Architectural Engineering department and is part of an interdisciplinary research effort on wildland-urban interface (WUI) fire emissions. The project focuses on how fires involving building materials and scaled residential structures generate aerosol and gas emissions, and how those emissions vary with fire behavior and experimental scale.
The fellow will contribute to a current NSF-funded project that combines scaled house construction, medium- and large-scale fire experiments, and data-driven interpretation. The research asks whether emissions from complex building assemblies can be predicted from their individual materials and how emission characteristics change from bench to larger scales. This makes the role especially suited to someone interested in connecting controlled experiments with practical wildfire-smoke questions.
Day-to-day work will include planning, running, and analyzing fire experiments; handling integrated datasets from temperature, heat flux, flow/velocity, combustion indicators, and aerosol/gas measurements; and evaluating relationships among fire behavior, emissions, additivity, and scale dependence. The role also includes developing or applying models to interpret the experiments, with possible directions including fire/smoke CFD, reduced-order or physics-informed models, urban dispersion tools, or multiscale coupling approaches.
The position is collaborative by design. The fellow will work with graduate students and project partners, prepare manuscripts and conference presentations, and contribute to follow-on proposal development and early studies related to future wildfire-smoke research. The broader research direction extends toward multiscale wildfire-smoke modeling, smoke transport, and interactions with the built environment.
Contact: Dr. Shichao Liu, Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Funding details
Salary: $55,000.00 per year; benefits package includes retirement match, wellness perks, tuition assistance, health insurance, life and long-term disability insurance, and retirement savings plans.
What's required
Applicants should hold a PhD in mechanical engineering, architectural/building engineering, fire protection engineering, civil/environmental engineering, chemical engineering, atmospheric science, or a closely related field. Strong candidates should have research experience in fire, smoke, thermal-fluid sciences, pollutant transport, or a closely related area; a strong foundation in heat and mass transfer, fluid mechanics, combustion, or environmental transport; scientific programming and quantitative data-analysis skills; experience with experimental research or experimental datasets; and a peer-reviewed publication record. Experience with medium- or large-scale fire experiments, aerosol/gas measurements, building-material combustion, model validation, uncertainty quantification, high-performance computing, or tools such as FDS/WFDS, QUIC-Fire/QUIC-SMOKE, FIRETEC, or related fire/dispersion models is desirable but not required.
How to apply
Prepare a current CV and one representative peer-reviewed publication aligned with the research direction. Send inquiries to Dr. Shichao Liu at [email protected] using the subject line “Postdoctoral Applicant – WUI Fire Smoke.” Apply via the Workday application link and note that applications are reviewed on a rolling basis until filled.
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Prepare your application
Review drafts and confirm requirements with the university.
Make your next move.
Prepare your application
Review drafts and confirm requirements with the university.