DC-26050-R&T Scientist in Digital Twins for Business Continuity Risk Assessment

Fixed term contract | Belval | 24 Months

Are you passionate about research? So are we! Come and join us

The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) is a Research and Technology Organization (RTO) active in the fields of materials, environment and IT. By transforming scientific knowledge into technologies, smart data and tools, LIST empowers citizens in their choices, public authorities in their decisions and businesses in their strategies.

Do you want to know more about LIST? Check our website: https://www.list.lu/

The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) is a mission-driven Research and Technology Organization that accelerates the transfer of research into innovation. The AIRA Research Group, part of the Human-centered AI, Data and Software (HANDS) research unit, focuses on assessing and enabling trustworthy AI adoption through methods and tools for compliance, readiness, and performance evaluation.

How will you contribute?

We are seeking a highly motivated R&T Scientist to join our team and advance the development of Digital Twins for assessing the impact of climate hazards on businesses infrastructure systems. In this role, you will contribute to the project Assessing Business Interruption Risks with Digital Twins (TWICE). The objective is to develop a prototype Digital Twin that assesses infrastructure disruption risks and evaluates their impacts on business interruptions by integrating data collection tools, machine learning models, serving infrastructure, and interactive dashboards. Within the team, your main responsibility will be to develop a risk assessment model and prepare it for deployment within the larger infrastructure. The main focus will be on the road/traffic network disruption caused by extreme flooding events.

Main Responsibilities:

• Design and implement a Digital Twin framework to assess business interruption risks, coupling hazard estimation and business infrastructure information.
• With the support of the engineering team, define a high level and system architecture for the Digital Twin Framework, maximizing the reuse of open-source components.
• Integrate models able to simulate the impact of estimated hazard on the target infrastructure.
• Demonstrate the functionality of the Digital Twin implementing a User-centric Interface.
• Define the data foundations of the Digital Twin by:
• Performing systematic data discovery, leveraging common data standards and practices.
• Identify data gaps that would limit the functionality of the Digital Twin and propose synthetic data approaches.
• Investigate potential alternatives for data interoperability, guaranteeing full replicability of the approach in multiple regions.
• Design and implement models for assessing business continuity, including:
• Performing a systematic review of the state-of-the-art in business interruption risk assessment techniques and solutions.
• Analyzing provided climate hazard estimation; being able to manipulate vector and raster data.
• Developing a model for risk-infrastructure interaction; for this purpose, the candidate needs to use OpenStreetMap and traffic simulator (e.g. SUMO).
• Designing and implementing a set of inter-related models that can predict the different levels of business interruption under different climate and infrastructure scenarios.
• In addition, the candidate is intended to:
• Develop integration tools for easy extension of the Digital Twin to other domains.
• Contribute to scientific dissemination through peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations.
• Support knowledge transfer within the research team and towards external collaborators.

Is Your profile described below? Are you our future colleague? Apply now!

Education:

• PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, or similar domains with relevant experience in projects in risk modelling, Digital Twin architecture and/or decision-support systems

Experience and skills:

Required Qualifications:

• Demonstrated ability to independently and proactively deliver high-quality outcomes for the different work packages, respecting scope and deadlines.
• Demonstrated hands-on approach, strong sense of responsibility, and excellent self-organization skills.
• Excellent communication skills with a strong ability to engage stakeholders at different levels.
• At least 2 years of postdoctoral experience in research, development, and innovation (RDI) activities (preferred)
• Hands-on experience across various aspects of digital tool development — including databases, serverless (Lambda) functions, backend services, models, and front-end development (preferred)
• Relevant past publications in peer-reviewed journals on topics related to Risk Modelling, Digital Twins and Decision Support Systems (preferred)
• Willingness to learn and adapt to new challenges (preferred)

Technical Skills:

• Relevant background in geospatial data analysis, and risk assessment
• Hands-on experience in the deployment of DT component in a research IT infrastructure (i.e., cloud/on-prem computing resources, containerized environments, storage/DBs, API)
• Hands-on experience handling diverse data formats (Images, Parquet, CSV, JSON, HDF5, Spatial data, raster data, vector data) and working with databases.
• Strong proficiency in Python, including object-oriented programming, testing, CI/CD, version control (Git)
• Hands-on experience in data modelling, including statistical methods and/or machine learning (preferred)
• Hands-on experience in image processing, remote sensing data, OpenStreetMap and/or SUMO traffic simulator (preferred)
• Dashboarding/Visualization frameworks (e.g. Streamlit, Dash, Grafana) (preferred)

Language skills

Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of French or German is an advantage.

Your LIST benefits

• An organization with a passion for impact and strong RDI partnerships in Luxembourg and Europe that works on responsible and independent research projects
• Sustainable by design, empowering our belief that we play an essential role in paving the way to a green society
• An environment encouraging curiosity, innovation and entrepreneurship in all areas
• Personalized learning programme to foster our staff’s soft and technical skills
• Multicultural and international work environment with more than 50 nationalities represented in our workforce
• Diverse and inclusive work environment empowering our people to fulfil their personal and professional ambitions
• Gender-friendly environment with multiple actions to attract, develop and retain women in science
• 32 days paid annual leave, 11 public holidays, 13-month salary, statutory health insurance
• Flexible working hours, home working policy and access to Digital lunch vouchers

Your application must include:

• A motivation letter oriented towards the position and detailing your experience
• A CV with contact details
• List of publications (and patents, if applicable)
• Contact details of 2 references

Please apply ONLINE formally through the HR system. Applications by email will not be considered.