Postdoctoral Research Associate

What you'd do

• Develop, implement, and apply physics-based numerical models to characterize and predict ocean and environmental conditions relevant to project objectives.
• Work with models such as HYCOM, ROMS, FVCOM, or comparable ocean circulation models.
• Analyze and predict currents, tides, waves, temperature, salinity, stratification, and related environmental states.
• Configure or adapt models for regional applications and develop workflows that translate model outputs into usable environmental information for downstream research and UUV operations.
• Integrate physics-based model outputs with observational and operational environmental datasets.
• Evaluate model performance through validation and comparison with available measurements, assess uncertainty and limitations, and support data assimilation, initialization, forcing, downscaling, or model-selection activities as appropriate.
• Develop reproducible computational workflows for processing, analyzing, and visualizing multidimensional ocean and environmental data.
• Contribute to peer-reviewed manuscripts, technical reports, presentations, and progress reports associated with the ONR project.
• Document modeling methods, assumptions, validation results, and research findings to support project deliverables and effective communication with collaborators and the funding agency.
• Collaborate with faculty, researchers, students, and external project partners in a multidisciplinary research environment.
• Participate in project meetings, communicate environmental modeling results to team members working in related areas, maintain technical documentation, and coordinate research activities to support project milestones.
• Provide technical guidance to students or other researchers when appropriate.

What they want

• A Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography, Ocean Engineering, Ocean or Atmospheric Sciences, Physics, Applied Physics, Earth Science, Applied Mathematics, or a closely related field is required.
• Demonstrated experience with physics-based numerical modeling of ocean, coastal, atmospheric, or related geophysical systems is required.
• Experience using HYCOM, ROMS, FVCOM, or comparable physics-based ocean models is required.
• Candidates must have sufficient expertise in scientific computing and numerical modeling to conduct advanced research independently with minimal training and to work effectively with complex environmental datasets.
• Advanced knowledge of physical oceanography, geophysical fluid dynamics, numerical methods, or closely related principles relevant to physics-based environmental modeling.
• Strong experience with numerical ocean or environmental models, including model configuration, forcing, simulation, analysis, and interpretation of multidimensional model outputs.
• Proficiency in scientific programming and computational tools commonly used in numerical modeling and environmental data analysis, such as Python, MATLAB, Fortran, C/C++, or comparable languages and tools.
• Ability to work with large observational, reanalysis, remote-sensing, and operational ocean/environmental datasets and to integrate these data with physics-based models.
• Knowledge of model validation, uncertainty assessment, data assimilation, model initialization, downscaling, or related model-data integration approaches.
• Excellent analytical, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills for addressing complex physical and computational research questions.