Postdoctoral Research Associate - Catalysis

Requisition Id 13458 

Overview: 

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 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.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is seeking to fill a Postdoctoral Research Position for catalysis in our Chemical Process Science Research Group in the Energy and Transportation Science Division. The postdoc will become part of our catalytic upgrading team that involves on-going collaborations among multiple national laboratories and universities. The successful candidate will conduct research in activation and conversion of carbon dioxide to high-value chemicals. Research will include catalyst development, reaction engineering, batch and continuous flow reactor development, synthetic and analytical chemistry.

The research spans basic to applied research technology for carbon management. The candidate will be expected to work in multi-disciplinary teams. The Chemical Process Science Research Group is a highly collaborative interdisciplinary team of chemical engineers, material scientists, physical and synthetic chemists, and computational modelling working on clean energy technologies. The postdoc will be encouraged to collaborate with colleagues at other National Laboratories as well as other ORNL researchers and actively present results at team meetings and conferences.

Major Duties/Responsibilities: 

• Perform synthesis and improve synthetic strategies to scale up synthesis, characterization of novel hybrid polymer catalysts to meet project goals. 
• Fix bed, batch and other reactor knowledge with experience experiment design, and mechanistic understanding to carry out reactions such as hydrogenation, oxygenation, reductions, coupling, dehydrogenations, and dehydration reactions.
• Perform and identify compounds and products with characterization tools (e.g., NMR, XRD, sorption analysis, TGA-MS, FTIR, GC-MS/FID, TEM/SEM)
• Participate in aspects of chemical process development, including technoeconomic analysis, lifecycle analysis and process scale-up.
• Work with the principal investigator and others as a team player to maintain a high level of scientific productivity and to meet project/task milestones.
• Responsible for preparing, presenting, and reporting research results and publishing scientific results in key peer-reviewed journals in a timely manner.
• Work with the principal investigator as necessary in developing new ideas and solving problems
• Communicate and collaborate with researchers and engineers operating experimental systems to design complementary experiments and physically realistic simulations, analyze data, and interpret results
• Ensure compliance with environment, safety, health, and quality program requirements.
• Maintain strong dedication to the implementation and perpetuation of values and ethics.
• 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 chemical engineering, chemistry, or a related field completed within the last 5 years

Preferred Qualifications:

• An excellent record of productive and creative research demonstrated by publications in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at scientific conferences
• Capable of conducting creative research independently with minimal supervision
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment and inter