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Working at MIT offers opportunities, an environment, a culture – and benefits – that just aren’t found together anywhere else. If you’re curious, motivated, want to be part of a unique community, and help shape the future – then take a look at this opportunity.

POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), to join a project on multi-vector, macro-scale energy systems optimization to study deep decarbonization scenarios. This project is primarily supported by the low-carbon energy center (LCEC) on electric power systems (EPS) and will involve researchers at MITEI.  The project will expand available optimization-based decision-support tools related to power and hydrogen infrastructure planning at MITEI to model important elements relevant to the energy transition.  This includes operational dynamics and retrofit options for the existing natural gas transmission and storage infrastructure, investment and operation of new CO2 infrastructure, and using data-driven methods to incorporate the impact of inter-annual and intra-annual variations in demand and renewables availability. The developed framework will be used to evaluate regional and national decarbonization pathways, and in particular, to study the relative merits of direct electrification versus other technology routes.  Responsibilities will include incorporating the above-mentioned elements into existing planning models available at MITEI while balancing computational tractability and modeling accuracy, using the developed models to provide policy-relevant recommendations regarding cost-effective strategies for decarbonizing space heating in buildings in cold climates, and investigating methods for representing temporal variability in input data in a computationally efficient manner. 

Job Requirements
REQUIRED: a Ph.D. in an engineering discipline; demonstrated background in optimization methods and applied energy system modeling; familiarity with algebraic modeling languages used for linear and mixed integer programming (e.g., Julia/JuMP, Python/Pyomo); and comfort working in a multidisciplinary environment. Job #19475

For further information about the group and related projects, please feel free contact Dr. Dharik Mallapragada at dharik@mit.edu.

Application material should include a full CV and a research statement. Applicants should also be prepared to provide at least two letters of recommendation as and when requested.

The project will be based on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA, but the option of working remotely for an initial period will be considered. 

This is a twelve-month appointment with annual renewal contingent on performance and funding.

4/6/21