Post-doctoral position in Atmospheric Chemistry

Public establishment belonging to IMT (Institut Mines-Télécom), placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, IMT Nord Europe has three main objectives: providing our students with ethically responsible engineering practice enabling them to solve 21st century issues, carrying out our R&D activities leading to outstanding innovations and supporting territorial development through innovation and entrepreneurship. Ideally positioned at the heart of Europe, 1 hour away from Paris, 30 min from Brussels and 1h30 from London, IMT Nord Europe has strong ambitions to become a main actor of the current industrial transitions, digital and environmental, by combining education and research on engineering and digital technologies.

Located on two main campuses dedicated to research and education in Douai and Lille, IMT Nord Europe offers research facilities of almost 20,000m² in the following areas:

-              Digital science,

-              Processes for industry and services,

-              Energy and Environment,

-              Materials and Processes

For more details, visit the School’s website: https://imt-nord-europe.fr/en/

BRIEF:

The activities that will be carried out during this post-doctoral 1-year period at CERI EE, IMT Nord Europe, are part of the French-Taiwanese bilateral project ‘Tropospheric Ozone in South East Asia: Budget and Mitigation Strategies (OSEAMS)’ funded by the French national research agency (ANR) and the National Science and Technology Council from Taiwan (NSTC). This project aims at understanding ozone sources and sinks in the South-East Asia region and developing mitigation strategies to reduce ozone concentrations and impacts.

The candidate will work on a specific task dedicated to atmospheric simulation chamber experiments, with the following key objectives:

1. Provide a detailed description of the ozone-forming chemistry occurring in Taiwan,

2. Investigate how this chemistry has evolved over the past three decades in response to mitigation measures.

Experiments will be performed in a large atmospheric simulation chamber (9 m³) equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation (PTR-ToF-MS, online GC-MS/FID, O₃ and NO_x analyzers, …). The chemical composition of representative urban & suburban air masses observed in Taiwan over the past 3 decades will be reproduced in the chamber. The ozone-forming chemistry will be thoroughly investigated, with a focus on assessing the sensitivity of ozone production to NOx and determining the ozone formation regime (whether NOx-limited or NOx-saturated). These chamber experiments will be interpreted using 0-D models, implementing current state-of-the-art chemical mechanisms such as the Master Chemical Mechanism (MCM), to evaluate the reliability of these mechanisms to describe O₃ formation in Taiwan.

The recruited post-doctoral fellow will be supported by an engineer who will assist with the operation of the chamber and instrumentation. This work is expected to result in both a scientific publication and a presentation at an international conference.

REQUIRED PROFILE: PhD in atmospheric chemistry