Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Integrated Assessment of Data Centers

The University of Notre Dame is a vibrant, mission-driven community where every employee is valued and supported. Rooted in a tradition of excellence and inspired by our Catholic character, Notre Dame is committed to fostering an environment of care that nurtures the whole person—mind, body, and spirit. Here, you will find a deep sense of belonging, a culture that prioritizes well-being, and the opportunity to grow your career while being a force for good in the world.

About the role

The University of Notre Dame invites applications for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to join a dynamic, interdisciplinary team undertaking a spatially explicit, contextually informed, and justice-centered assessment of the strategies and resources—including power, water, land, health, and workforce infrastructure—needed to inform current decision-making about data centers in Indiana and the Midwest in the near term and design the data centers of the future.

This will start with the development of a framework for capturing the multidimensional and complex potential impacts (both positive and negative) that are unique to each community in the region. The assessment will also evaluate local, state, and national-level policies and strategies that can drive the sustainability of data center growth by integrating their social, technical, economic, and environmental implications for communities and the region.

This research fellow will join a postdoctoral cohort with expertise in LLMs, machine learning, infrastructure sustainability, policy, environmental economics, community resilience, and spatial modeling. The cohort will collaborate with Notre Dame faculty and partners to lead research activities intended to create a strong foundation for long-term work.

We particularly encourage applicants with expertise in hydrology, modeling, water resource management, systems ecology, or geographic information systems, who can articulate how their unique perspective, methods, or substantive focus will expand the cohort’s collective capacity and strengthen the project’s ability to support resilient and equitable community responses to data center design and growth.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with faculty to design and carry out interdisciplinary research central to the integrated assessment of hyperscale data center development in the Midwest.
• Develop analytical frameworks of evaluation for the environmental, technical, economic, social, and policy dimensions of data centers.
• Create accessible models and other decision-support tools that support holistic understanding of tradeoffs across sectors for future scenario planning.
• Co-author and support high-impact, interdisciplinary research publications in leading sustainability and environmental science journals.
• Engage in collaborative grant writing and proposal development to sustain and expand the cohort’s research initiatives.
• Early activities may include:
  • Use of large language models and AI techniques to support data collection, synthesis, analysis, and construction of a modeling platform for key resource demands (electricity, water, land, and physical infrastructure).
  • Data collection, analysis, and modeling for capturing social, economic, workforce, and health considerations, with emphasis on distributional effects, justice, and participatory methods.
  • Policy analysis at the local, state, and federal levels.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. (in hand by the starting date) in a relevant field, including, but not limited to, hydrology, ecology, environmental science, geography, or engineering.
• Demonstrated ability to lead research in at least one critical domain of the larger research effort.
• Strong analytical and methodological expertise, appropriate to the applicant’s discipline, with a record of applying those methods to complex, real-world problems.
• A strong publication record in a field directly relevant to the envisioned program.
• Excellent communication skills and an ability to work collaboratively with researchers from a wide range of disciplines.

Schedule

This is a full-time position with an initial appointment of one year, renewable for an additional year based on satisfactory performance and availability of funding.