Skip to content ↓

Position Filled: Climate & Computing Postdoctoral Impact Fellow

Job Description

Please note this position has now been filled.

The MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) Impact Fellowship Program is a postdoctoral opportunity for individuals who want to transcend academia and industry to apply their expertise to near-term change for a more sustainable future. MCSC Impact Fellows will work with MIT researchers and consortium industry members in collaboration with external organizations and communities to implement solutions needed for global economic transformation to address the global climate change and sustainability crisis. Throughout the program, Impact Fellows will prepare for leadership positions within the sustainability domain in a wide range of contexts, as well as prepare to drive research that advances breakthrough scalable solutions towards accelerated change.

The MCSC brings together large companies from different sectors to discuss barriers to the sustainable transition. MCSC Impact Fellows listen to the discussion and use their expertise to drive the conversation towards sufficient detail to identify problems whose solutions have immediately actionable steps. Roadblocks to a sustainable transition are rarely contained within traditional boundaries of academic disciplines or market sectors. Thus, an Impact Fellow must have expertise in a field along with technical fluency in others to be able to traverse boundaries between disciplines during live conversations and problem-definition exercises. Impact Fellows work in teams to construct problem definitions and potential solutions that draw from their expertise spanning social sciences, humanities, engineering, and physical sciences. Teams may be built with MIT faculty spanning multiple departments as well as corporate partners.

In this posting, we seek an Impact Fellow to focus on the climate and sustainability implications of computing and communications by bringing a computer science, artificial intelligence, and electrical engineering perspective on topics important to the MCSC. Within the next decade computing and communications will consume more than 20% of the world’s electricity coupled with significant impact on materials and chemical use, as well as waste generation. This burden is juxtaposed with the tremendous benefits from computing capability that will be critical to rapidly and broadly decarbonizing energy use and mitigating pressures on planetary boundaries. As the climate implications of computing and communications is a broad topic with many interconnected sub-disciplines (data center efficiency, computing architectures, algorithm development, power systems, opportunities in global data and networks, to name a few) we suggest that candidates showcase their experience traversing disciplines during problem-solving in their application materials.

Job Requirements:

  • Ph.D. in electrical engineering, computer science, or artificial intelligence and decision-making
  • Candidates should have demonstrated expertise within a subset of the following:
    • Energy use implications and algorithmic innovations for large language models and derivative work flows
    • Programming languages and software engineering
    • Development of algorithms within artificial intelligence and machine learning
    • Computer architecture, power systems, or communication networks
    • Integrated circuits and emerging computing hardware
  • Experience in proposal writing, group management and coordination
  • Must be highly collaborative and able to work in a team environment with experts from diverse backgrounds
  • Strong communication skills (both written and verbal), including strong listening skills

Application Instructions:

Qualified scientists are asked to submit a cover letter and CV to this post on the MIT Human resources site (Job #22712).

Applications will be considered upon receipt and until the position is filled.

This is a two-year appointment with the possibility of renewal.

Back to top