PhD in Atmospheric Chemistry en CDD 36 mois à IMT Nord Europe

Discipline: Atmospheric chemistry

Line Manager: Alexandre TOMAS

Workplace: IMT Nord Europe, Bourseul site, Marie Curie building

Type of contract and duration: CDD 3 years

CONTEXT:

Public establishment belonging to IMT (Institut Mines-Télécom), placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Industry, IMT Nord Europe has three main objectives: providing our students with ethically responsible engineering practice enabling them to solve 21st century issues, carrying out our R&D activities leading to outstanding innovations and supporting territorial development through innovation and entrepreneurship. Ideally positioned at the heart of Europe, 1 hour away from Paris, 30 min from Brussels and 1h30 from London, IMT Nord Europe has strong ambitions to become a main actor of the current industrial transitions, digital and environmental, by combining education and research on engineering and digital technologies.

Located on two main campuses dedicated to research and education in Douai and Lille, IMT Nord Europe offers research facilities of almost 20,000m² in the following areas:

- Digital science,

- Processes for industry and services,

- Energy and Environment,

- Materials and Processes.

For more details, visit the School’s website: www.imt-nord-europe.fr

The position is vacant within the Centre for Education, Research and Innovation in Energy and Environment (CERI EE) of IMT Nord Europe. The PhD work will be carried out in the frame of a collaboration between the Atmospheric Sciences and Environmental Engineering research unit (SAGE) of CERI EE and the department of Atmospheric Sciences of the National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taiwan.

SAGE has ongoing research activities focusing on atmospheric chemistry, air quality and the impacts of human activities on the composition of the atmosphere. It has currently a staff of about 50 people including 17 full-time faculty members. Research projects aim at a better understanding of the physical and chemical processes involved in the formation, transport and aging/transformation of gaseous and particulate pollutants in outdoor and indoor atmospheres.

SAGE and NTU are looking for a motivated PhD student to conduct scientific research in the field of atmospheric chemistry. The proposed work seeks to investigate the ozone budget in the atmosphere, which will lead to a better understanding of atmospheric chemistry and the design of improved ozone mitigation strategies. This project involves a field campaign and modelling works.

BRIEF:

This project deals with tropospheric ozone O₃, which is a well-known air pollutant in the troposphere and a powerful oxidant. It is a greenhouse gas responsible for ~12% of the anthropogenic global warming since 1750 (IPCC 2021). Unlike other air pollutants that have major primary emission sources, O₃ is entirely a secondary pollutant and has a complicated non-linear dependence on its precursors, i.e. nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Implementing efficient actions to reduce local and global ozone is thus difficult and often implies the use of chemistry-transport models (CTM). Yet, modeling is still associated with significant uncertainties and a model validation is strongly required.

In this PhD work, it is planned to test the reliability of these models and to improve our understanding of the ozone budget. The following activities are expected:

(i) to determine vertical profiles of trace gases (ozone precursors) and of meteorological parameters at a field campaign in Taiwan in Spring 2025;

(ii) to model the ozone budget by using chemistry-transport models.

One of the original aspects of this work is to compare the model results to the observations of a new metric: the ozone production rate, which is poorly reported in the literature. This metric will be measured during the field campaign, also allowing to investigate more deeply the tropospheric ozone budget, especially to evaluate the contributions of local chemical production and long-range transport. The final objective is to enable more efficient mitigation strategies to be implemented in order to reduce ozone levels. The success of this project, conducted within a partnership with the National Taiwan University and the National Central University in Taiwan, will constitute a major step forward for the scientific community.

REQUIRED PROFILE: master degree in a relevant area of atmospheric sciences

Skills

Keen interest in field campaigns and modelling

Knowledge

Analytical techniques for measurement of gas-phase species

CONDITIONS:

The job is to be filled as to 01/11/2024 for a period of 36 months (temporary contract). 

A cotutelle is expected to be agreed between IMT and NTU.

INFORMATION AND APPLICATION METHODS:

For any information on the missions, please contact Prof. A. Tomas (alexandre.tomas@imt-nord-europe.fr) and Dr. S. Dusanter (sebastien.dusanter@imt-nord-europe.fr) at IMT, and Dr. S. Griffith (stegriff@ntu.edu.tw) at NTU.

For any administrative information, please contact the Human Resources Department: jobs@imt-nord-europe.fr

DEADLINE DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 10/05/2024