Postdoc for electrifying urban mobility

Here is a great opportunities to work with excellent researchers to advance theoretical and technical methods for electric mobility systems. You will get good academic competence development and professional training for future career. In this position you will have close collaborations and communications with internationally renowned institutions and industrial partners along with a reciprocal and supportive working environment. 

Information about the research for the position
The greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from the transport sector take up approximately a quarter of global GHG emissions and are still rising. Traffic congestions and safety have been two of main causes for economic losses and causality worldwide. To facilitate the fast transition to emission-free, more efficient and safer transportation systems, the world has witnessed significant advances in emerging transport technologies such as transportation electrification and connected automated vehicles. These emerging technologies are promising panacea to renovate current mobility systems and significantly contribute to transition to more sustainable mobility systems. However, these new techniques bring not only opportunities but also challenges. There are many theoretical, technical and practical issues that need to be addressed to put these new technologies or techniques to good use. To name a few, transportation electrification needs large scale deployment of charging facilities and re-design of some transport systems (e.g., the scheduling of buses); the adoption rate of electric vehicles is not high due to vehicle and infrastructure limitations; the environmental benefits of electric vehicles may not be positive if the electricity is mainly from thermal power in some regions and utilization rate is low; connected automation encounters a set of dilemma in mixed traffic with both human-driven vehicle and automated vehicles.

The research within the position will focus on advancing one or several aspects of aforementioned new challenges for electrifying urban mobility leveraging emerging techniques. The successful candidate for this position will explore the key questions for facilitating transportation electrification, connected automation in transportation systems or integration of the two technologies. The specific topics (but not limited to) could be:

1, Optimizing infrastructure deployment, network design and scheduling for electric vehicles (both private car and public transits)
2, Control and management for connected electric vehicles at the traffic flow and trajectory levels
3, Develop novel methodological framework for analysis and assessments of actual usage and effects of the new transport technologies (e.g., economic, environmental and safety aspects) leveraging big data and machine learning.

Information about the research group
The postdoc will be in Urban Mobility Systems research group, a research group within Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering in Chalmers University of Technology. The group was established in 2018. Since its foundation, the lab has received valuable support from Chalmers civil engineering department, Areas of Advance Transport Chalmers, Swedish Innovation Agency, Swedish Energy Agency, and EU, and developed close collaborations with major industry partners, such as WSP, Volvo Group and RISE etc. With the disruptive development of emerging technologies, such as electric vehicles, connected automated vehicles, and Mobility-as-a-Services, unprecedented changes have been witnessed in nearly every aspect of the urban transport system and more are foreseeable.

In the past few years, the group has been actively working on those topics, and the collective effort has resulted in a number of high-quality research papers, over 50 million SEK research grants, and newly developed international collaborations. The PhD position on offer will join the team to advance sustainable mobility systems, with scrupulous guidance and supportive helps from senior researchers.

Major responsibilities
Your major responsibility as a postdoc researcher is to pursue your research development under the strategic themes of the research group.

The major responsibilities include:
- Pursue research in line with research project, publish and present scientific articles and take part in discussions.
- You will develop scientific concepts and communicate the results of your research, both orally and in writing such as
scientific articles and reports.
- Actively collecting researchers and practitioners within academia and with society at large.
- The position will slightly contribute to supervising undergraduate and postgraduate students

Qualifications
For this position, qualified candidates must have a PhD level degree in one of the following relevant fields: Transportation engineering; Operation research; Mathematics; Electrical engineering; Automatic controls; Computer science; or other subjects that fit the requirements of the position.

- Excellent oral and writing and communication skills in English. Swedish is a merit but not mandatory
- Strong professional/educational background in the mentioned relevant fields.
- Strong and long-term commitment and self-motivation to academic work/career
- Mathematic knowledge background about optimization, statistics and algebra
- Programming skills for solving optimization problem and big data analysis

Contract terms
This postdoc position is a full-time temporary employment for two years.

We offer
Chalmers offers a cultivating and inspiring working environment in the coastal city of Gothenburg. 
Read more about working at Chalmers and our benefits for employees.

Chalmers aims to actively improve our gender balance. We work broadly with equality projects, for example the GENIE Initiative on gender equality for excellence. Equality and diversity are substantial foundations in all activities at Chalmers.

Read more and apply here


Application deadline: December 15th, 2022

For questions, please contact:
Kun Gao, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering gkun@chalmers.se

*** Chalmers declines to consider all offers of further announcement publishing or other types of support for the recruiting process in connection with this position. ***