Advertisement Number: P.Rect./R&D/2023/115

About the group: The team has made impactful contributions at national scale to address the challenges of Air Pollution and Climate Change. Under the leadership of Prof. S.N.Tripathi, the team has built ground-breaking innovative approaches for indigenously built low-cost sensor-based network technologies for nation-wide urban air quality monitoring and Real Time Source Apportionment (RTSA). The group has successfully evaluated a very large field-based sensor evaluation project in collaboration with MPCB, Mumbai. RTSA work has been done in Delhi with support from CPCB and is currently being carried out with support from Swiss Development Corporation in the cities of Lucknow and Pune. The group has also established sensor network in 5 cities (Jaipur, Chennai, Guwahati, Kanyakumari and Delhi) with support from Ericsson.

Background of the project: The criteria for identifying the non-attainment cities under National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) was based on the PM₁₀ levels monitored using manual monitoring technology. One of the limitations of the criteria set was that this ended up excluding the rural districts of India which did not have continuous PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ air quality monitoring. Recently, the group has been awarded the International Centre of Excellence on advanced pollution monitoring technologies recognized by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. This work will be carried out as a part of this Centre. The states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have amongst the worst air pollution in India. A new path-breaking project aims to deploy and monitor air quality in all the rural districts of the two states. The project "To Support the Rural Air Quality Monitoring" is to set up a scientifically validated real-time air quality monitoring network which will provide unprecedented insights into the air quality conditions of rural India.

Roles & Responsibilities: The Project Post-Doctoral Fellow (PDF) should be primarily in charge of data analysis, calibration, accuracy, report generation, and publishing research papers. The PDF would be responsible for coordinating and running large scale networks for air quality measurements using low-cost sensors. The PDF will also take part in analysis of large datasets evolved during such monitoring. The PDF should be open to visit field sites whenever required.

Essential Qualification & Experience:

• Ph.D. in Civil Engineering/Environmental Sciences/Atmospheric Sciences/Climate Sciences/Mathematics/Physics/Computer Science/Electrical Engineering/Data Science or relevant field.
• Experience in handling large data-sets, related to air quality/atmospheric research.
• Experience on programming languages like FORTRAN, Python, MATLAB, Igore, R etc.
• Minimum 2 first author publications in SCI journals within the last 3 years.

Compensation & benefits:

S/he will get the opportunity to work in a conductive environment and can avail the hostel/family accommodation facility (according to availability) at IIT Kanpur. As regards to the medical facilities, only the OPD facility for self shall be available at the Health Centre of IIT Kanpur without any reimbursement of cost of medicines. Any outside referral shall not be reimbursed. For the purpose, a medical booklet shall be provided to you on request.

Duration of appointment:

• The post is purely temporary and is on contractual basis.
• The appointment for the post is up to 2 years or till the completion of the project, whichever is earlier. Appointment will be initially for one year. Renewal of appointment will be subjected to the performance of the candidate.
• Salary: Rs. 60,000/65,000/70,000 per month (as per the experience)

The department reserves the right to fix suitable criteria for short listing of eligible candidates satisfying qualifications and experience. The selection will be based on two stage interviews: online and in-person. Short listed candidates will be informed with an email about the date of interview.

Interested candidates may apply via email (to [email protected]) giving full details qualifications and experience with copies of relevant certificates by May 31, 2023. *Extended till June 10, 2023.

Please mention the post applied for and advertisement no. in the subject line of email.