Research Lead for Population Futures

Requisition Id 13059 

Overview:  

As a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science national laboratory, Oak Ridge 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 6,000 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.

We are seeking to hire a Distinguished R&D Staff Scientist to lead ORNL’s Population Futures research and development strategic thrust.

 

This position aligns to the Human Geography Group within the Human Dynamics Section, Geospatial Science and Human Security Division (GSHSD), National Security Sciences Directorate, at ORNL. As part of our team, you will work on groundbreaking research and development for the US Federal government, supporting US energy security, environmental security, and national security missions. The GSHSD is the national leader in applied research and development in GIScience, with programs ranging from global population modeling to AI-driven gravity modeling, to geospatial data strategies for power grid modernization.

 

Population Futures at ORNL sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, spatial demography, activity modeling, and micro/mesoscopic simulation to develop forecasts of human behaviors, movement, and outcomes. We seek to expand upon ORNL’s already strong capabilities in these four domains to develop new capabilities that characterize the potential changes and impacts on future populations from climate change, conflict, and policy scenarios. Our goal, as with today’s climate models, is to articulate a range of possible human-centered outcomes based on scientifically grounded human dynamics models coupled with known or anticipated decision feedback in the geopolitical and community dimensions.

 

The Distinguished R&D Staff Scientist for Population Futures will design, develop, and lead team-based research efforts, from proposal development to science execution to delivery of outcomes. They will create multi-discipline teams that can address complex research questions and serve as a principal investigator (PI) on large projects, with responsibility for the technical and financial aspects of the project. Our typical deliverables to sponsors include large-scale (country-to-global scale) datasets, unique models and algorithms that can transition to sponsor environments, geo-computing architectures to implement science methods at scale, and information systems to enable sponsors to on-demand leverage of ORNL’s science. Partnering closely with the Human Dynamics Section Head and Research Group Leaders across the GSHS Division, the Distinguished R&D Staff Scientist will pursue new research opportunities with sponsors, including cultivating future opportunities and contributing to white papers that characterize the state of science and provide a vision to apply new science for sponsor mission needs. Additionally, there is an expectation of routine publication of scientific advances in peer-reviewed journals.

The Human Geography Group at ORNL leads the development of methodologies, tools, and capabilities to advance knowledge of population distribution, geodemographics, and population futures. Leveraging capabilities across the GSHS Division and ORNL, Human Geography researchers lead interdisciplinary projects to enhance the spatio-temporal resolution and understanding of population dynamics, both domestically and abroad. The group’s research emphasizes models for the distribution and characterization of populations with respect to the built environment and human activity spaces. Additional focus areas include developing statistical learning frameworks, uncertainty quantification, machine learning and inferencing, and land use/land cover characterization to inform geo-demographics. The Human Geography group supports Federal missions ranging from hazard mitigation and response; consequence assessment; energy, environmental, and health equity and justice, and humanitarian response.

 

Major Duties/Responsibilities: 

• Develop and lead the execution of ORNL’s Population Futures research strategy.
• Lead research as a Principal Investigator (PI) across multiple project teams to achieve successful research outcomes.
• Design collaborative research efforts and build teams with ORNL staff.
• Mentor junior staff in research strategies, principles, and ethics.
• Deliver strong science and engineering artifacts