Description

This postdoctoral fellowship opportunity, offered through the NRC Research Associateship Programs, supports research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The focus is on studying the relationship between structure and function in chemical and material systems by integrating advanced synchrotron X-ray measurement techniques—specifically X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS), X-ray Fluorescence (XRF), and X-ray Diffraction (XRD)—with chemical processes and materials synthesis.

The fellow will be based primarily at Brookhaven National Laboratory within the Synchrotron Science Group, with occasional travel to NIST in Gaithersburg, MD. Responsibilities include planning and performing high-throughput synchrotron measurements at NIST’s Beamline for Materials Measurements, collaborating closely with NIST scientists, and developing workflow and data-analysis tools to manage and interpret experimental data.

Research examples include:

• Investigating compositionally complex alloys such as metallic glasses and high-entropy alloys, where local atomic disorder probed by XAS leads to emergent material properties.
• Applying machine learning to drive electrochemical deposition of coatings, controlling surface properties of industrially relevant materials, with in situ synchrotron measurements guiding the process.

This fellowship offers a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of materials science, chemical engineering, and data science, leveraging state-of-the-art synchrotron facilities and computational tools.