The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Golden, Colorado is the nation's primary laboratory for research and development of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.

From day one at NREL, you’ll connect with coworkers driven by the same mission to save the planet. By joining an organization that values a supportive, inclusive, and flexible work environment, you’ll have the opportunity to engage through our eight employee resource groups, numerous employee-driven clubs, and learning and professional development classes.

NREL supports inclusive, diverse, and unbiased hiring practices that promote creativity and innovation. By collaborating with organizations that focus on diverse talent pools, reaching out to underrepresented demographics, and providing an inclusive application and interview process, our Talent Acquisition team aims to hear all voices equally. We strive to attract a highly diverse workforce and create a culture where every employee feels welcomed and respected and they can be their authentic selves.

Job Description

Seeking a high-caliber postdoctoral candidate to join our growing Mobility, Behavior, and Advanced Powertrains Department and to conduct research related to mobility and energy impacts of emerging transportation technologies. Candidates with knowledge and experience in travel demand modeling, travel behavior methods, geospatial analysis, high performance computing, and advanced choice modeling techniques are encouraged to apply.

Relevant areas of research the candidate will be working on include: (i) Travel demand modeling, (ii) Econometric and statistical methods for transportation data analysis, (iii) Mobility and energy impacts of disruptive transportation technologies, and (iv) Transportation system efficiency quantification. Prior knowledge in applying traditional (four-step) travel models, and advanced agent-based transportation models is a must. Application of machine learning techniques to travel behavior modeling is desired.  

Specific activities may include:

• Developing travel choice models using traditional (survey) and non-traditional (big-data) sources.

• Working with travel demand models, particularly integrating NREL developed tools such as the Mobility Energy Productivity (MEP) metric, and Route Energy Prediction Model (RouteE) into existing travel demand models.

• Performing big data mining, analysis, visualization and interpretation.

• Working with cloud-based web applications and scalable data anaylsis pipelines, refactoring data science scripts as cloud-native software.

• Building, enhancing, and validating modeling and simulation tools.

• Assisting in producing high-quality publications, reports and research proposals.

• Supporting additional related research projects as needed.

Our group desires a candidate who possesses:

• Strong collaboration skills—thrives working in a collaborative team environment but is comfortable working independently when necessary Experience with transportation modeling packages such as CUBE, TransCAD, MATSim,or similar open source tools.

• Strong interest in both high-performance computing and transportation modeling, with a degree/background in one or the other.

  • Relevant transportation skills may include travel demand modeling, micro-, meso- and/or macroscopic traffic modeling, transportation energy analysis, and/or automated vehicle modeling.

  • Relevant computing skills may include machine learning, deep learning, distributed computing, and big data management/analytics.

• Familiarity with location-based data, and its use for travel modeling. 

• Knowledge of GIS, GPS data analysis and visualization, web design, and/or engineering computing.

• Strong background with scientific programming languages such as Python, R, MATLAB, or Julia.

• Demonstrated versatility working with various tools and approaches.

Must be a recent PhD graduate within the last three years.