Post-Doctoral Researcher - Civil & Construction Engineering - Hypersonic Flow Solvers and Computational Mechanics

Job Title: Post-Doctoral Researcher - Civil & Construction Engineering - Hypersonic Flow Solvers and Computational Mechanics

Posting End Date: July 30, 2026

Position Start Date: September 1, 2026

Required Degree: 

PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Computational Science, Computer Science, or a closely related field, completed prior to the start date.

The required degree must be completed by the start date.

Required Qualifications: 

• Strong background in computational mechanics, numerical methods, scientific computing, or solver development.
• Demonstrated experience developing scientific or engineering simulation software.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work independently while contributing effectively to a collaborative research team.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience developing or using computational fluid dynamics solvers, particularly for compressible, high-speed, or hypersonic flows.
• Experience with computational solid mechanics solvers.
• Experience with high-order mesh generation, computational geometry, adaptive meshing, moving meshes, or mesh optimization.
• Experience with fluid-structure interaction or other multiphysics coupling strategies.
• Experience with isogeometric analysis, high-order finite element methods, discontinuous Galerkin methods, finite volume methods, or related advanced discretizations.
• Experience with C++, Fortran, Python, Julia, MATLAB, or other scientific computing languages.
• Experience with MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, Kokkos, RAJA, PETSc, Trilinos, MFEM, deal.II, libMesh, SU2, OpenFOAM, FUN3D, or related computational science software.
• Experience with collaborative software development practices, including Git, GitHub/GitLab, testing frameworks, continuous integration, and technical documentation.

Position Summary:

A post-doctoral researcher position is available to support advanced research and software development in computational mechanics, with a primary emphasis on high-performance hypersonic flow solvers and related multiphysics simulation technologies. The researcher will contribute to the development, implementation, verification, validation, and application of advanced numerical methods for high-speed compressible flows and related multiphysics simulation capabilities. Depending on the candidate's background and project needs, research may involve spline-based finite element methods, coupled fluid-structure interaction, space-time solvers, solid mechanics, mesh generation, and related computational modeling capabilities.

The position is intended for a highly motivated researcher with strong technical depth in numerical methods, scientific computing, solver development, and computational mechanics. Experience with one or more of the following areas is especially desirable: computational fluid dynamics, computational solid mechanics, mesh generation, multiphysics coupling, parallel programming, and/or isogeometric analysis.

This role emphasizes rigorous computational research, high-quality scientific software development, and close collaboration with faculty, students, and external research partners. The successful candidate will help advance next-generation simulation capabilities for challenging hypersonic and multiphysics applications.

Duties/Expectations: 

The Post-Doctoral Researcher will contribute in the following areas:

Hypersonic Flow Solvers, Computational Mechanics, and Numerical Methods

• Develop, implement, test, and improve numerical methods for hypersonic and high-speed compressible flow simulation.
• Contribute to scalable solver capabilities for complex flow physics, which may include shocks, boundary layers, thermal effects, fluid-structure coupling, solid mechanics, mesh motion, and other challenging multiphysics phenomena.
• Develop and evaluate numerical discretizations, nonlinear and linear solvers, preconditioners, time-integration strategies, and stabilization approaches relevant to large-scale simulation.
• Support research involving advanced discretization technologies, potentially including finite element methods, high-order methods, space-time methods, and related approaches.
• Assist in integrating solver components across fluid, solid, mesh, and multiphysics modules.
• Support verification and validation activities, including benchmark problems, code-to-code comparisons, manufactured solutions, and comparison with available experimental o