Post-Doctoral Research Associate - Nuclear Engineering

Post-Doctoral Research Associate - Nuclear Engineering

Post-Doctoral Research Associate for Plasma-Material Interaction Studies

Nuclear Engineering

Regular, Full-time, Pay Grade 00

The Post-doctoral Research Associate will be based at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK) and will involve collaborative research activities with several facilities including the long-pulsed fusion experiment, WEST, in Cadarache, France and the DIII-D fusion experiment at General Atomics in San Diego, CA. The position may require travelling internationally multiple times each year to coordinate experimental research efforts in France and travel domestically to coordinate research collaborations in San Diego, CA. The primary responsibilities will be to coordinate the collection of measurements from a suite of plasma diagnostics assessing the boundary plasma; to facilitate the integration of these measurements into theoretical and computational models being developed by UTK collaborators; and to utilize computational modeling tools available at UTK to interpret experiments.

The researcher should have experimental and/or computational modeling experience in plasma physics and/or fusion energy research. The researcher will be expected to interact with experimental, theoretical, and computational modelling groups at collaborating institutions to better utilize edge diagnostics to advance the understanding of plasma-material interactions and scrape-off layer impurity transport in the collaborating experiments, with a particular emphasis on material migration and thin surface coating formation/evolution. The researcher will be expected to publish original research in refereed journals and present research at appropriate technical conferences on these topics. The researcher will be an active team member representing the Nuclear Engineering Department at UTK and at collaborating facilities and will have the opportunity to work closely with researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, as well as researchers at General Atomics, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and others in the US and European PMI communities.

EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE, AND SKILLS REQUIRED:

Position requires a Ph.D. in the physical sciences (Physics, Applied Physics, Engineering Physics, Astrophysical Sciences) or engineering (Mechanical, Aerospace, Nuclear, Electrical). Experience in one or more of the following disciplines is also required: plasma-surface interactions, edge plasma diagnostics, plasma physics, material science. Familiarity with laboratory equipment, programming languages, and data reduction and analysis must be demonstrated.