Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Postdoctoral Fellowships

1. Postdoctoral Associate

Job Number: 22589

Functional Area: Research - Engineering

Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering

School Area: Engineering

Employment Type: Full-Time

Employment Category: Exempt

Visa Sponsorship Available: Yes

Schedule:

POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, Civil and Environmental Engineering-Olivetti Group and Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), to conduct research, create tools, develop educational materials, and participate in implementation projects on materials flow analysis (MFA), microeconomic price modeling, and implementation of research works on the use of alternative materials in cement and concrete. One research topic will focus on developing material flow models for conventional (e.g., slag) and non-conventional (e.g., pounded ash) sources, with an emphasis on the identification, quantification, and characterization of these implications in a multiregional economic system.

This work will also revolve around the implementation of models and innovative solutions for optimizing the carbon performance of the cement and concrete sector using waste-derived raw materials. Other activities will include developing software tools, case studies, and educational materials for practitioners who would use these approaches to support the design, production, and procurement of low-carbon cement and concrete mixtures. This will partially be accomplished through implementation projects with practitioners. Will collaborate and interact with MIT faculty, research staff, postdoctoral associates, graduate students, and research sponsors and implementation partners.  

Job Requirements

REQUIRED:  a Ph.D. in an engineering or scientific discipline and demonstrated ability to effectively communicate research results in the form of peer-reviewed research journal articles and oral presentations. PREFERRED:  expertise in industrial ecology, microeconomics, statistics, and/or concrete technology; and experience working with pavement engineers and creating software tools.  Job #22589

Travel to visit research and implementation partners and present research at conferences will be required.

Posted 4/7/23

  

2. Postdoctoral Associate

Job Number: 22581

Functional Area: Research - Scientific

Department: Plasma Science and Fusion Center

School Area: VP Research

Employment Type: Full-Time

Employment Category: Exempt

Visa Sponsorship Available: Yes

Schedule:

Job Requirements

REQUIRED:  Ph.D. in physics, nuclear engineering or related field; and general knowledge of fusion-grade plasma physics. PREFERRED:  hands-on experience on millimeter-wave systems.  Job #22581

Posted 4/6/23            

3. Postdoctoral Associate

Job Number: 22543

Functional Area: Academic (non-faculty)

Department: Haystack Observatory

School Area: VP Research

Employment Type: Full-Time

Employment Category: Exempt

Visa Sponsorship Available: Yes

Schedule: M-F

POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, Haystack Observatory, to join an interdisciplinary research center engaged in radio astronomy, geodesy, upper atmospheric physics, and radar applications. Will play a significant role in the radio astronomy group and contribute to ultra-high-angular-resolution studies of supermassive black holes and active galactic nuclei and related software development for the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a next-generation EHT (ngEHT) array, and other radio interferometers. 

Haystack Observatory has a principal role in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) represented by the development of next-generation very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) systems, radio interferometric modeling/imaging techniques, and scientific research using observational data.  Its research also includes low-frequency radio astronomy represented by the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), high-frequency observations with the Haystack Observatory 37-m telescope, and the development of novel instrumentation for astronomy and geoscience.  

Job Requirements

REQUIRED:  a Ph.D. in astronomy, astrophysics, physics, computer science, applied mathematics, or a related field; experience with analysis of astronomy data; demonstrated ability to effectively communicate research results in the form of peer-reviewed research journals and oral presentations;  excellent communication, programming, and scientific research skills; and willingness to work with a team and to interact and collaborate with other radio scientific researchers at Haystack Observatory.  PREFERRED: expertise in the areas of radio interferometry, software development, astronomy data pipelines, digital signal processing, statistics, and/or theory/numerical simulation.  Job #22543

Application material must include a cover letter and curriculum vitae. The curriculum vitae should include a list of publications and contact information for their references. Applications sent by April 30 will receive full consideration, but we will continue to accept applications until this position is filled.

Haystack is located in Westford, MA.

Posted 3/28/23

 

4. Postdoctoral Associate

Job Number: 22515

Functional Area: Research - Other

Department: Comparative Media Studies/Writing

School Area: Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences

Employment Type: Full-time Temporary (Hybrid)

Employment Category: Exempt

Visa Sponsorship Available: Yes

Schedule:

POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, to assume a position in one or more of the following:  media industries, critical internet studies, media and climate, sound studies, media and representation, and/or media literacies. Will work in one or more of the program’s dimensions of comparativity (historical, methodological, cultural) and across media forms, including sound/music, screen-based media such as film/television/games, and other forms of social and computational media.  Postdocs will teach one course each semester and will be on campus at MIT during this time. In addition to teaching and developing courses, postdocs are also expected to conduct research and contribute to the intellectual life of the department and school.  Applicants must identify, from this list of selected faculty, at least one with whom you would like to work:  Professor Ian Condry, Professor Heather Hendershot, Professor Thomas Levenson, Professor Justin Reich, Professor Edward Schiappa, and/or Professor T.L. Taylor.  

Job Requirements

REQUIRED:  receipt of a Ph.D. between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2023,* and competence in media studies.  If you have not earned your degree at the time you apply, an attached letter of certification from your institution's registrar’s office, department of graduate studies, or your department head is required to confirm that you are expected to be formally awarded your degree by July 1, 2023. Please make sure that your letter writer specifies the date of your expected conferral date.  Applicants who have not been formally awarded their degree by July 1, 2023, will not be considered.  Job #22515

Salary will be $75,000 per year with standard benefits and each postdoc will receive a research fund of $1,000 to cover travel and other costs associated with research and professional development.

The postdoctoral candidate will be selected for a one-year appointment, effective July 1, 2023. Based on funding, there might be a possibility of a one-year extension.

Postdocs may not hold other appointments for the duration of this appointment.

Applicants must have received their degrees from institutions other than MIT.  International scholars will be considered for the position, but the appointment is contingent upon eligibility to legally work within the United States. MIT will offer a J1 visa sponsorship if needed. The selection committee will make decisions in May 2023.

Your cover letter must indicate which faculty member(s) you are applying to work with and why you have made that selection.  In addition to applying with a cover letter and CV via the MIT website, applicants must also apply via Interfolio at http://apply.interfolio.com/122852.

Posted 3/29/23

 

5. Postdoctoral Associate, Convo AI, Personal Robots

Job Number: 22542

Functional Area: Academic (non-faculty)

Department: Program in Media Arts and Sciences

School Area: Architecture & Planning

Employment Type: Full-time Temporary (Hybrid)

Employment Category: Exempt

Visa Sponsorship Available: Yes

Schedule:

POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, CONVO AI, PERSONAL ROBOTS, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, to join the Personal Robots research group.  Will bring experience building large language models (LLMs) and specialized conversational systems to support next-generation human experience over long-term encounters with personified social robots; conduct independent and collaborative research in the conversational AI field; publish conference and journal research papers; make public presentations; collaborate on designing and developing innovative conversational AI systems such as embodied conversational agents; collect data sets for training new models; design evaluation studies and collect and analyze data for research projects; participate in grant-writing and fundraising; mentor/advise graduate students and junior researchers; and stay up-to-date with the latest research and trends in the field. 

A full job description is available here.  

Job Requirements

REQUIRED:  completed Ph.D. thesis in neural conversational systems or closely related area; publications in conversational AI venues (e.g., EMNLP, ACL, NAACL, IJCAI, ICLR, NeurIPS, AAAI, etc.); understanding of human-in-the-loop NLP and human-centered tasks; excellent coding skills in modeling and conversational interface design for real-time interaction (e.g., PyTorch/TensorFlow and Python proficiency); and experience/interest in deploying conversational systems in real-world applications. PREFERRED: interest/experience in the following--multimodal connections to generative language models, personalized LLM, persona-based LLM, and/or LLM with/for RL planning; familiarity with the MIT RAISE Initiative’s work, including the MIT App Inventor and Personal Robotics Group, ethical or interactive limitations in current LLM systems, social emotional reasoning using language, language grounding in social interactions, multi-person dialog, bilingual/multilingual problems (cultural, linguistics and interaction, and neuro-symbolic or knowledge graph-based systems; and interest in developing graduate-level seminars/courses to teach the design, computational approaches, development, and ethical usage with neural-based conversational agents.  Job #22542

This is a one-year appointment with the possibility of extension due to funding and course of the research.

Posted 3/28/23

 

6. Postdoctoral Associate

Job Number: 22525

Functional Area: Academic (non-faculty)

Department: Chemistry

School Area: Science

Employment Type: Full-Time Temporary

Employment Category: Exempt

Visa Sponsorship Available: Yes

Schedule:

POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, Chemistry, to work in the group of Brett McGuire on microwave spectroscopy.  The primary responsibility will be the commissioning of a cavity-enhanced Fourier-transform microwave spectrometer.  Will leverage this new instrument and existing microwave spectrometers to study molecular systems of astrochemical interest and design your own portfolio of research tailored to your interests using the instruments; and make substantial contributions to the design and construction of a new database for molecular spectra.  Will also be involved in the training and mentorship of graduate and undergraduate students in the laboratory, writing scientific publications, making effective written and oral presentations, and career development.  

Job Requirements

REQUIRED:  Ph.D. in chemistry or related field, excellent written and oral communication skills, and the ability to work both independently and as part of a team.  PREFERRED:  expertise in high-resolution microwave spectroscopy, particularly cavity-enhanced and/or chirped-pulse variants, and vacuum instrumentation; experience with database architecture; and proficiency with basic quantum-chemical calculations, Python, and/or LaTeX.  Job #22525

The initial term is for one-year, with annual renewals contingent upon performance for up to three years total. Longer terms beyond the third year may be possible contingent on funding.  The ideal start date would be August 2023 or earlier, but there is some flexibility.

Posted 3/24/23

 

7. Postdoctoral Associate, McGuire Research Group

Job Number: 22524

Functional Area: Academic (non-faculty)

Department: Chemistry

School Area: Science

Employment Type: Full-Time Temporary

Employment Category: Exempt

Visa Sponsorship Available: Yes

Schedule:

POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, Chemistry, to work in the group of Brett McGuire on the development of machine learning approaches to complex chemical mixture analysis.  Recent work in the group has resulted in a new application of natural language processing (NLP) approaches to modeling the composition of complex chemical mixtures, particularly in the interstellar medium (Lee et al. 2021 ApJL 917, L6).   Will work to adapt these approaches, and design new ones, to microwave spectroscopic analyses of chemical mixtures in the laboratory.  Will also be involved in the training and mentorship of graduate and undergraduate students in the laboratory, writing scientific publications, making effective written and oral presentations, and career development.  

Job Requirements

REQUIRED: Ph.D. in chemistry, computer science, physics, or related field; documented expertise in machine learning; excellent written and oral communication skills; and the ability to work both independently and as part of a team.  PREFERRED:  expertise with chemistry-based applications of machine learning; familiarity with high-resolution molecular spectroscopy techniques; and proficiency with basic quantum-chemical calculations, Python, and/or LaTeX.  Job #22524

The initial term is for one-year, with annual renewals contingent upon performance for up to three years total. Longer terms beyond the third year may be possible contingent on funding.  The ideal start date would be August 2023 or earlier, but there is some flexibility. 

Posted 3/24/23