Post Doctoral Fellow

Job Category
Faculty Non Bargaining

Job Title
Post Doctoral Fellow

Department
Research | W. Liu | Department of Materials Engineering | Faculty of Applied Science (Wenying Liu)

Posting End Date

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the Posting End Date above.

Job End Date
Feb 28, 2025

The salary range for this position is $75,000 plus statutory benefits.

The Department of Materials Engineering at the Vancouver campus (Hydrometallurgy group) is looking for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to work on a 12-month project on prediction and management of the long-term environmental risk of mine waste rock piles via 5G-enabled instrumentation and monitoring.

Large quantities of mine waste are generated after valuable metals are extracted. Upon exposure to air and water, a diverse range of metals and metalloids are released and mobilized to the surrounding environment. The release process involves complex multiphase fluid transport, heat transport, geochemical reactions, and microbial activities. There is an urgent need to manage the environmental risk posed by mine waste rock piles given the spatial and temporal scale of the problem. A major bottleneck is the lack of data on waste rock pile properties. The main objective of this research is to understand how to best use 5G-enabled wireless sensor networks to monitor key characteristics such as moisture, oxygen content, and temperature of mine waste rock piles, and to use machine learning (ML) to predict drainage quantity and quality. This position will involve the following:

• Design and build a laboratory-scale, fully instrumented waste rock pile to demonstrate the application of 5G-enabled sensor networks to monitor key characteristics of waste rock piles.
• Use ML approach and the data collected to predict waste rock drainage properties.
• Help with the supervision of two PhD students assisting with the project.
• Participate in monthly project review meetings with the sponsor.
• The publication of the research findings is a strong objective of this postdoctoral position.

We highly value the following skills and knowledge for this position:

• The candidate is required to have completed their PhD in the last five years and have strong knowledge in areas such as transport through porous media, geochemistry, reaction kinetics, and laboratory skills.
• A candidate with expertise in or willingness to learn data analytics and ML is preferred. Language experience with C, C++, Python, R is a significant plus. A PhD student will assist the candidate with work in ML.
• The candidate will have good communication and interpersonal skills, which will be required to interact with the project sponsor and interactions with technical staff at mine sites.

The successful candidate will be supervised by Drs. Wenying Liu and Roger Beckie, in collaboration with UBC BRIMM https://brimm.ubc.ca/ and Data Science Institute https://dsi.ubc.ca/ .  If you have any queries on this position, please contact [email protected] or [email protected]

The position is expected to start March 2024, for a period of 12 months, with possible extension if further funding is provided by the sponsor.  

The salary range for this position is $75,000 plus statutory benefits.

Applications will be reviewed until the position is filled.

Equity and diversity are essential to academic excellence. An open and diverse community fosters the inclusion of voices that have been underrepresented or discouraged. We encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the B.C. Human Rights Code, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, racialization, disability, political belief, religion, marital or family status, age, and/or status as a First Nation, Metis, Inuit, or Indigenous person.