Scientists in Soft Materials and Membrane Group- R&D Associate

Requisition Id 13771 

Overview:  

We are seeking a scientist with a strong background in chemical engineering, process development, and characterization to develop energy efficient and cost-effective materials and processes for clean energy applications. The successful candidate will focus on problems related to thermodynamics, process development, and process optimization for the separation and recovery of critical materials from a wide variety of electronic waste, carbon capture from flue gas and air, separation of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) precursor from fermentation broth, and water treatment. The candidate should have expertise in membrane development, membrane characterization, and membrane-based separations. Selected candidate will also be responsible for developing new and exciting ideas for proposals, building collaboration within and outside ORNL, execute the project from idea stage to eventually generating quantifiable outcomes such as publications and invention disclosures.  Candidates should have expertise in characterization such as SEM, EDS, XRD, ICP-OES, UV-Vis, and BET. This position resides in the Soft Materials and Membranes Group in the Chemical Sciences Division, Physical Sciences Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).  

 

As a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science national laboratory, ORNL has an extraordinary 80-year history of solving the nation’s biggest problems. We have a dedicated and creative staff of over 7,000 people! Our vision for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) is to cultivate an environment and practices that foster diversity in ideas and in the people across the organization, as well as to ensure ORNL is recognized as a workplace of choice. These elements are critical for enabling the execution of ORNL’s broader mission to accelerate scientific discoveries and their translation into energy, environment, and security solutions for the nation.

 

Major Duties/Responsibilities: 

• Work with a diverse team of scientists, engineers, and technicians to develop and advance the technologies for separation and recovery of materials for clean energy applications.
• Develop independent ideas and write proposals and lead projects from end-to-end including team building, leading multidisciplinary team to perform experiment, collect and analyze data, write DoE reports, present results in international conferences, publish results in the form of manuscripts and invention disclosures.
• Take responsibility for the safe operation in the separations laboratory and safety of the associated equipment and analytical instrumentation.
• Independently formulate research problems and design research strategies, work with computational chemists and experimentalists to guide the design of materials and processes.
• Develop and lead new research directions and contribute to research proposals to compete for internal and external funding.
• Train postdocs, students, interns, and visiting scholars in separations and process development with utmost emphasis on safety.
• Present and report research results in international conferences and publish scientific results in peer-reviewed journals in a timely manner.
• Ensure compliance with environment, safety, health, and quality program requirements.

• Deliver ORNL’s mission by aligning behaviors, priorities, and interactions with our core values of Impact, Integrity, Teamwork, Safety, and Service. Promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility by fostering a respectful workplace – in how we treat one another, work together, and measure success.

 

Basic Qualifications:

• A PhD in chemistry, chemical engineering, material science or a closely related science discipline

 

Preferred Qualifications:

• A solid foundation membrane-based separations, process intensification, process development, process optimization, and characterization such as SEM, EDS, XRD, ICP-OES, UV-Vis, and BET.
• Extensive expertise in membrane fabrication in different configuration suc