Postdoctoral Fellow (PREP0004187)

The Chronicle Of Higher Education, Inc.; Gaithersburg (MD); On-site; USD 85,447 - 88,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Career development

Retirement support

Job summary

Johns Hopkins University seeks a PREP Research Associate to develop analytical tools for monitoring micro and nanoplastic particles. This role supports collaboration with NIST and involves working with advanced OPTIR microscopy techniques. Ideal candidates will hold a Ph.D. in related fields and have expertise in vibrational spectroscopy. The position is for a term of 1 year, with options to renew. The total rewards package includes support for health, life, career, and retirement.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. degree required.
• Expertise in high-resolution chemical mapping with OPTIR or similar methods.
• Experience in multivariate statistical methods for vibrational spectroscopy.

Responsibilities

• Develop methods using OPTIR microscopy for particle characterization.
• Design experimental systems for measuring artifacts and depth relationships.
• Establish benchmarks for OPTIR measurements.

Skills

High-resolution chemical mapping

Multivariate statistical methods

Team collaboration

Education

Ph.D. in physical sciences, materials engineering, or chemical engineering

Tools

OPTIR microscopy

Raman spectroscopy

IR microspectroscopy

Job description

Johns Hopkins, founded in 1876, is America's first research university and home to nine world-class academic divisions working together as one university.

Salary

$85,447 - $88,500

Johns Hopkins University: Whiting School of Engineering: Office of Research and Translation

Description

PREP Research Associate

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Professional Research Experience Program (PREP). NIST recognizes that its research staff may want to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest and, therefore, requires those institutions to be recipients of a PREP award. The PREP program involves staff from a wide range of backgrounds conducting scientific research across various fields. Individuals in this position will perform technical work supporting the collaboration's scientific research.

Research Title

Vibrational micro-spectroscopist for detecting and identifying irregularly shaped particles (U.S. Citizens Preferred)

U.S. Citizen Preferred

The work will entail

The Materials Measurement Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking qualified persons (U.S. Citizens preferred) to develop analytical tools needed to monitor and characterize micro and nanoplastic (MNP) particles. The applicant will use commercial optical photothermal infrared (OPTIR) microscopy and other vibrational spectroscopy and imaging methods to improve identification of irregularly shaped particles less than 10 μm.

Key Responsibilities will include but are not limited to:

• Develop methods using OPTIR microscopy to characterize nonspherical polymeric particles (<10 μm), including hyperspectral, imaging, and polarization-dependent approaches.
• Design and evaluate experimental systems to examine signal origin, measurement artifacts, and depth-dependent compositional relationships in OPTIR with pristine and chemically modified control samples.
• Develop performance metric benchmarks for OPTIR measurements that can be used for evaluating data and method transferability to widely used IR-based and Raman techniques.
• Contribute to NIST efforts for evaluating and characterizing crystallinity, molecular structure, and composition of candidate reference materials, which include irregularly shaped, polymeric particles and asymmetric material arrays.

Employment Terms

This opportunity is to be an associate researcher in the NIST Materials Measurement Science Division for a term of 1 year, with options to renew. Associate researchers are NOT Federal Employees, but they work alongside NIST researchers and with NIST’s world-class instrumentation. Relocation expenses will not be provided. U.S. Citizens hired into associate positions may have the opportunity to seek longer term Federal Employment.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. degree in physical sciences, materials engineering, or chemical engineering.
• Expertise in high-resolution chemical mapping of materials and tissues with OPTIR (preferred), Raman, or IR microspectroscopy.
• Expertise in multivariate statistical methods used for evaluating vibrational spectroscopy data (OPTIR preferred), including chemometrics, adapted ML tools, or other applied methods.
• Demonstrate successful participation as a member of multidisciplinary research teams.

Total Rewards

Johns Hopkins offers a total rewards package that supports our employees' health, life, career and retirement. More information can be found here: https://hr.jhu.edu/benefits-worklife/.

Equal Opportunity Employer

The Johns Hopkins University is committed to equal opportunity for its faculty, staff, and students. To that end, the university does not discriminate on the basis of sex, gender, marital status, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status or other legally protected characteristic. The university is committed to providing qualified individuals access to all academic and employment programs, benefits and activities on the basis of demonstrated ability, performance and merit without regard to personal factors that are irrelevant to the program involved.

EEO is the Law

EEO is the Law: https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/22088_EEOC_KnowYourRights6.12ScreenRdr.pdf