Assistant Professors Geoscience & Engineering (# of pos: 7)

The department Geoscience & Engineering (GSE) is expanding in to new directions and as a result we are looking for new colleagues that share our vision, ambition, and enthusiasm to join our team.

We are inspired by the societal challenges posed by climate change, energy transition, resource security, and a sustainable society in an urbanized delta. Research addressing these societal issues requires an interdisciplinary approach. The research at our department can be characterized as “application-inspired, fundamental research.”

The mission of our department GSE is that we contribute to: Responsible Use of the Geosphere considering the Impact on the Earth System and Society.

We are looking for colleagues that can develop internationally leading research on topics in the following themes:

• Geo resource extraction with a minimal negative impact on society and the environment
  • Geo-resources are indispensable for the energy transition. The extraction rate of these geo-resources (minerals and geothermal energy) has to increase significantly in the coming decades. This will lead to increased emissions into the atmosphere, soil, ground and surface water. A circular system prevents the creation of waste streams. For a large part of the minerals in the energy transition we require knowledge for understanding how to prevent waste and environmental impact by recovery from the various waste flows.
    We need to develop knowledge so that the probability of success increases for finding new ore deposits and geothermal reservoirs by integrating models into advanced simulators in a probabilistic context and with AI.
  • Induced earthquakes are the result of human intervention in the subsurface. We need to increase our understanding of the chain between intervention and the processes that lead to impact in society.

• Water and sediment in complex man-made and engineered water systems
  • Climate change leads to an acceleration of the hydrological cycle which locally results in more severe hydro-meteorological extremes (floods, droughts). These lead to changes in the transport and accumulation of sediments and dissolved, reactive substances in soil, ground and surface water. Knowledge of these processes, particularly at the landscape scale, is urgent to provide governments with a better understanding of the effect of intended measures. Essential tools that need to be further developed are satellite data, dynamic modeling and data-assimilation;

Within these themes we have defined the following topics that we would like to work on in our department:

• Geological interpretation of seismic data
• Near-surface geophysical characterization and monitoring
• Dynamic simulation of sediment deposition in deltas
• Metal-speciation in mineralogy / geochemistry
• Bio-geochemical leaching of rocks
• (Bio geochemical) reactive transport in porous media
• Bio-geochemistry for Resources and Waste Engineering

Besides research, key job responsibilities of this job include;

Education: contributing to the development and teaching of graduate courses in our new MSc programs Environmental Engineering and Applied Earth Sciences)

Organization: Contributing to organizational / administrative activities and committees with the Department and Faculty.

Projects: Initiating and contributing to new research projects. We encourage proactive engagement with both government and private partners for increased societal impact.