"Assistant Research Professor"

Assistant Research Professor

Location: Notre Dame, IN

Open Date: Jan 06, 2026

Deadline: Jan 11, 2026 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time

Description:

The Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative (ND-ECI), a unit within Notre Dame Research (NDR), seeks an Assistant Research Professor to support the research and development of the Community-Led Environmental AI for Resilient (CLEAR) Watersheds project. This role focuses on optimizing flood, water quantity, and quality management across rural-urban landscapes within the St. Joseph River Basin (SJRB).

The Assistant Research Professor will serve as a technical lead for watershed-scale modeling, specifically investigating groundwater-surface water interaction at the rural-urban interface. Leveraging process-based and data-driven hydrologic models, along with Geographical Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing data, and multi-objective optimizations, the professor will help develop a stakeholder-adopted decision-support framework (DST). This position will collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of engineers, ecologists, and social scientists to support community-centered resilience strategies.

Drawing on deep expertise in hydrological processes and computing, the responsibilities include:

• Comprehensive Watershed Modeling: Lead all aspects of watershed modeling for the St. Joseph River Basin, including the development, calibration, and validation of hydrologic models to capture detailed land use and management effects.
• Geospatial & Remote Sensing Integration: Utilize GIS and remote sensing data to inform model inputs, refine spatial resolution, and improve the accuracy of hydrologic outputs for stakeholder-defined scenarios.
• Workflow Scripting & Automation: Develop and maintain Python and R scripts to automate data integration, model execution, and analysis, enabling the efficient testing of intervention scenarios.
• AI/ML Development: Assist in the development of machine learning emulators (such as LSTMs and CNNs) to approximate hydrologic outputs, working to reduce scenario evaluation time for real-time decision support.
• Guidance for Cloud-Based Data Architect: Collaborate on the management of data workflows and cloud services for synthesizing large environmental datasets.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Co-Production: Facilitate technical requirements gathered from municipal public works and agricultural leaders to ensure the DST reflects rural land management priorities and urban flood risks.
• Scholarly Contribution: Actively contribute to community knowledge through peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations.
• Mentorship: Mentor undergraduate and graduate students researching hydrologic modeling.

Qualifications:

Strong written and verbal communication skills are essential for effective collaboration with diverse partners. The strongest candidates will possess:

1. Ph.D. in Hydrology, Civil/Environmental Engineering or a related discipline with at least 5 years of experience.
2. Expertise in hydrologic modeling tools (e.g., SWAT, VIC) and a track record of modeling complex watershed dynamics.
3. Advanced proficiency in GIS and the use of remote sensing data for environmental modeling.
4. Demonstrated software scripting skills in common scripting languages (Python, R, Bash) to facilitate complex scientific workflows and machine learning.
5. Experience investigating groundwater-surface water interactions and rural-urban interface challenges.
6. Ability to work with interactive visualization tools to translate complex data into user-friendly maps and dashboards for non-technical stakeholders.

To apply, visit https://apply.interfolio.com/179769