Post-Doctoral Research Associate - Subsurface Reactive Transport

PNNL's Earth System Science Division enables energy independence and national security through leadership in earth systems science, engineering, and decision analytics. Our work focuses on solving complex problems in the dynamic Earth system. Our interdisciplinary scientists steward abreadth of efforts that encompass research on plants to groundwater science and coastal zones, to storm prediction.

Our research focuses on understanding and mitigating operational risks at the interface of human and natural environments. This includes predicting the impacts of natural hazards and extreme climate events on Earth and human systems, along with the impacts of wildfire, flooding, sea level rise and storm surges. We focus on understanding and mitigating environmental contamination and increasing the resiliency, security, and sustainability of water resources. We provide geointelligence through advanced sensing and data analytics to forecast complex system behaviors and operational performance to understand human-natural systems. This includes informed decision making and enhanced community resilience, advanced monitoring, and remote sensing of environmental systems for energy and national security. It also includes developing energy systems, including geothermal energy, sustainable oil and gas production, storage and utilization, along with carbon sequestration.

Driven by a “science-to-solutions” philosophy, we provide scientific leadership and technology to enhance national security, mitigate natural hazards and optimize disaster response. In the critical areas of energy, environment, intelligence, and defense, we deliver insights and decision support through the development of tools and solutions.

Responsibilities

The Subsurface Fate and Transport Modeling Team within the Environmental Subsurface Science Group is seeking applications for a Post-Doctoral Research Associate position. Successful applicants will run multiphase reactive transport models within the open source PFLOTRAN simulator. They will collaborate with researchers employing PFLOTRAN to simulate multiphase fluid flow and reactive transport during CO2 injection into reactive rocks. This will involve modeling CO2 mineralization through complex reaction networks, applying diverse numerical techniques to model CO2 reactivity in fractured rock, and developing strategies for critical mineral extraction concurrent with CO2 storage. The research associate will also have the opportunity to engage in other project work in areas of contaminant fate and transport modeling, geothermal energy, nuclear waste disposal, and more.

Through their research, the associate will develop an internal and external network of collaborators and project partners and participate in professional societies at the regional and national level. The associate is expected demonstrate commitment to data quality and accuracy, strong written and oral communication skills, as evidenced by high-impact peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations, and be able to work independently and in a team setting. The applicant must demonstrate a strong ethic of service to the scientific community and a commitment to both scientific excellence and national impact on developing transformative science and technology solutions relevant to our nation’s energy security and prosperity. Finally, the position requires that the associate complies with PNNL policies regarding environmental health and safety, waste management, and protection of intellectual property.

The position is immediately available for 12 to 24 months, with the potential for an additional 12 months or transition to a permanent position, dependent upon available funding and sustained performance.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Candidates must have received a PhD within the past five years (60 months) or within the next 8 months from an accredited college or university.

Preferred Qualifications:

• The candidate must have experience simulating groundwater flow, reactive transport, and/or multiphase flow within the Earth’s subsurface.
• Experience with geochemistry or geochemical transport modeling software (e.g., CrunchFlow, Geochemist’s Workbench, MINTEQA2, PFLOTRAN, PHREEQC, TOUGHREACT, etc.)
• Experience modeling subsurface CO2 sequestration
• Experience simulating subsurface Earth system processes (e.g., groundwater flow, solute transport, biogeochemical reaction)
• Experience running PFLOTRAN
• Experience with state of the art numerical methods
• Experience with numerical methods for solving systems of nonlinear PDE’s (e.g., finite volume method, finite element method)
• Python scripting experience (e.g. H5py, Matplotlib, NumPy, pandas, SciPy)
• Experience with Linux-based operating systems
• Experience with high performance computing
• Experience programming in modern Fortran or C/C++
• Demonstrated proficiency with verbal and written communications