Postdoctoral Research Associate

About the role

The Collective Intelligence in Motion (CIM) Lab at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC) seeks a Postdoctoral Researcher to advance secure, low-latency communications and AI-driven control for autonomous vehicle systems with an emphasis on 5G/6G Open RAN (near-RT RIC, xApps/rApps) and vehicular edge computing.

Responsibilities

• Research & Publications: 35% Conduct original research in NextG (5G/6G) with emphasis on O-RAN (near-RT RIC, xApps/rApps), network security, and spectrum management. Design and evaluate AI/ML methods (DL/RL/LLMs/FL) for network automation and decision-making in autonomous/vehicular systems. Lead high-quality publications and create reproducible artifacts (code, datasets, experiment scripts).
• Systems, Security & Testbeds: 35% Build and operate prototypes on lab testbeds (e.g., O-RAN SC/srsRAN/OAI/ns-3), integrating SMO/RIC pipelines and UAV/vehicular edge components. Implement rigorous experiments, data pipelines, and performance evaluations; harden systems with best security practices (PKI/TLS, RBAC, secure CI/CD). Release open-source software packages and documentation; maintain benchmarks and continuous integration for reproducibility.
• Collaboration, Proposals & Mentoring: 30% Contribute to proposals and collaborate across academia/industry partners to secure funding and deliver joint milestones. Mentor graduate and undergraduate researchers (project planning, experiments, writing) and foster a collaborative, high-performance lab environment. Support knowledge transfer: internal tech talks, guest lectures/modules tied to lab testbeds, and external demos with stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Doctoral degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or a closely related field.
• Foundation in network security for 5G/6G and O-RAN, including TLS 1.2/1.3 with mTLS, PKI/X.509 and certificate lifecycle, IPsec/MACsec, RBAC/ABAC, and secure key/secrets management.
• Familiarity with O-RAN architecture and interfaces (A1, E2, O1/O2, Open Fronthaul) and their security implications in SMO/near-RT RIC deployments.
• Experience with secure software engineering: threat modeling, secure coding/code review, dependency/SBOM management, container/Kubernetes security, and reproducible experiments.
• Strong programming skills (e.g., Python/C++); ability to prototype and evaluate security controls on cloud-native stacks (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm).
• Records of scholarship including designing research protocols, conducting studies/experiments, and authoring peer-reviewed papers.
• Excellent writing, communication, and presentation skills; demonstrated ability to work in a collaborative, multidisciplinary team and meet deadlines on multiple projects.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on with O-RAN SC/srsRAN/OAI and secure RIC/SMO deployments (e.g., Kubernetes RBAC, NetworkPolicies, Pod Security, service-mesh mTLS such as Istio/Linkerd).
• Experience implementing/assessing identity and access for xApps/rApps and SMO northbound APIs (OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, fine-grained policy), and multi-tenant isolation.
• Knowledge of relevant standards and guidance (e.g., 3GPP TS 33.501, O-RAN WG11 Security) and ability to translate normative controls into testable checklists.
• Applied AI/ML for network security/automation (DL/RL/LLMs/RAG/FL) including anomaly detection, policy learning, or intrusion detection in RAN/edge systems.
• PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE WITH MATLAB, ns-3 (or srsRAN/OAI/O-RAN SC), PYTHON, AND JAVASCRIPT; FAMILIARITY WITH TOOLS SUCH AS WIRESHARK/eBPF IS A PLUS.
• STRONG PUBLICATION RECORD (Q1 JOURNALS AND/OR TOP-TIER CONFERENCES); PRIOR MENTORING AND PROPOSAL CONTRIBUTIONS ARE DESIRABLE.