Assistant Research Scientist (PREP0004100) Full-time

Assistant Research Scientist

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards (NIST) Professional Research Experience (PREP) program. NIST recognizes that its research staff may wish to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest, thus requires that such institutions must be the recipient of a PREP award. The PREP program requires staff from a wide range of backgrounds to work on scientific research in many areas. Employees in this position will perform technical work that underpins the scientific research of the collaboration.

The position will collaborate with NIST researchers and NIST's external collaborators in a variety of topics relevant to their work including social scientists, engineers, and scientists – connecting economics to fundamental research, multi-disciplinary analysis, and decision support tools related to activities across a range of research topic areas, building and infrastructure, resilience, and decision science. Initial activities will include evaluating consumer preferences for product labeling and demonstrating the benefits and costs of alternatives.

The position is in the Applied Economics Office (AEO), a part of the Engineering Laboratory (EL) at NIST, provides economic products and services through research and consulting to industry and government agencies in support of productivity enhancement, economic growth, and international competitiveness, with a focus on improving the life-cycle quality and economy of constructed facilities and manufacturing processes that support social and economic functions. The AEO is integrated within EL's major research thrusts: energy conservation, community resilience planning, manufacturing, fire, building construction, and safety. The AEO delivers high quality research and tool development that informs and assists stakeholders in their decision-making processes.

The objective of this role is to support community resilience planning through the development of methods and tools that evaluate the economic impacts of disruptive events and persistent stressors, while accounting for stakeholder perceptions and associated decisions related to future event uncertainty and co-benefit (co-cost) valuation. There will be special focus on criteria and methods to improve the resilient performance of structural systems in the built environment while maintaining cost-effectiveness and supporting community-defined objectives in addition to resilience. Additionally, this researcher will work on the Hurricane Maria Investigation and Supplemental project on Hurricane Fionia and their impact on Puerto Rico.

The work will entail:

• Analyzing data
• Reviewing relevant literature
• Designing data collection instruments (surveys)
• Writing reports and research articles
• Publishing within refereed journals and technical research series
• Communicating research at professional conferences

Qualifications:

• Must be a US citizen
• Bachelor's degree in Economics
• At least one year of relevant research experience
• Proficiency in Stata (hypothesis testing, causal analysis, data visualization)
• Proficiency in Zotero or similar
• Proficiency in Excel (large scale data cleaning, validation, and visualization)
• At least one peer-reviewed publication in a professional journal
• At least one first author technical publication
• Experience in quantitative and qualitative data analysis
• At least one conference presentation
• Experience working with LLMs
• Proficiency in LaTeX (Overleaf)
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Logical thinking and problem solving
• Patience and attention to detail
• Excellent writing and communication skills