Research Assistant

**Weitere Informationen**:
The position is to be filled at the earliest possible date and offered for a fixed term for one year initially.
A further employment of at least two more years is intended.
The fixed-term employment is possible as it constitutes one of the fixed-term options of the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (German Act on Fixed-term Scientific Contracts).
This is a full-time position.
The salary is based on the German public service salary scale (TV-L).
The position corresponds to a pay grade of EG 13 TV-L.

**Unser Profil**:
The Institute of Building Materials Research at RWTH Aachen University is a nationally and internationally recognized research institute for interdisciplinary, fundamental and practice-oriented research and development in the field of construction materials. The working group “Microstructure and Modelling” focus on understanding and quantifying the link between the microstructure (phase composition and pore network) of cementitious materials and its macroscopic properties (mechanical and chemical). The objective is to design the best pathways to dramatically reduce the CO2 emissions of the construction industry.

This PhD project is one of the two PhDs taking place at RWTH in the Carbon4minerals project, a Horizon Europe project, funded by the European commission. Carbon4Minerals develops innovative technologies for CO2 capture and use in the production of low carbon minerals as alternative building materials. It is a European consortium of 14 academic and industrial partners. This project concerns the development of reactive transport models for carbonation curing as supporting simulation tools for process and product development.

**Ihr Profil**:

- University degree (master or comparable) in material science, civil engineering, mineralogy or chemical engineering.
- A good knowledge of programming language (C++, python) and data analysis is required.
- A good autonomy and curiosity in mathematical modeling, and computational mathematics is expected.
- Your skills in English needs to allow a good oral, and written communication with international collaborators.
- Knowledge of cement science, thermodynamics for geosciences is beneficial for this project. As it is hosted in a German university, a basic communication skill in German, or willingness to learn it during the PhD is required.

**Ihre Aufgaben**:
This project aims to develop a reactive transport model to model the carbonation curing including the coupling between CO2, water and heat transport, and the chemical reactions. You will be responsible to develop and validate this model. You will have to familiarize yourself with thermodynamic and reactive transport modeling for cementitious materials. You will develop a model adapted to carbonation curing of cementitious materials, and implement and iterate on the model. You will also validate the model using data from lab and pilot-scale for the consortium partners. You will also be responsible for the dissemination of your results (project internal knowledge transfer, conferences, scientific articles). Finally, you will also be responsible in participating in common tasks of the institute, in particular teaching.

**Über uns**:
RWTH is a certified family-friendly University. We support our employees in maintaining a good work-life balance with a wide range of health, advising, and prevention services, for example university sports. Employees who are covered by collective bargaining agreements and civil servants have access to an extensive range of further training courses and the opportunity to purchase a job ticket.

**Besoldung / Entgelt**:
EG 13 TV-L

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