Join Our Team at UW’s NHERI RAPID Facility as a Research Scientist!
The University of Washington’s NSF-funded NHERI RAPID Facility is actively seeking a skilled Research Scientist to join our dynamic team.
This position is a fantastic opportunity for experienced professionals or those with a strong background in fields such as public health, environmental health, or civil engineering, aiming to leverage their skills in a highly impactful and research-intensive setting. As part of our dedicated team, you’ll play a key role in helping curate state-of-the-art equipment and train the next generation of disaster researchers. With a particular emphasis on research related to climate change impacts on health, you’ll utilize cutting-edge methodologies to gather and analyze data, advancing our understanding of public health in the context of natural disasters. Experience with fieldwork, including soil and water sampling, is highly valued as you will be directly involved in on-site data collection and analysis.
Bachelor’s Degree in Public Health / Industrial Hygiene/ Engineering/Health Sciences and Two years of Research experience OR Equivalent combination of education/experience supporting a research facility environment.
About University of Washington NHERI RAPID Facility
About the NHERI Network and the RAPID Facility:
Funded by the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Directorate, the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure, NHERI, is a nationwide, shared-use network of facilities tailored for the natural hazards engineering research community. Investigators employ the NHERI network sites to test innovative ideas for mitigating damage from natural hazards, including earthquakes, windstorms, tsunamis, storm surges, wildfires, and landslides.
The Natural Hazards Reconnaissance Facility (referred to as the “RAPID Facility") is the field reconnaissance node of the NHERI network. Headquartered at the University of Washington (UW), it is a collaboration between UW, Oregon State University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Florida. The RAPID enables state-of-the-art field collection of critical scientific, engineering, social science, environmental and public health data following natural disasters. The Facility includes: (i) surveying equipment such as lidar, total station, digital level, GNSS, seismic equipment, ground investigation equipment, un-crewed aerial systems equipped with image and lidar data collection capabilities,... various imaging equipment including street view and 360-degree cameras, coastal equipment including a remotely operated hydrographic survey boat, ADP, grab sampler, processing computers, various other hand-operated measuring equipment, and to be determined equipment to assist researchers in environmental and public health obtain perishable data following disasters; (ii) software to support data collection and process collected data, including the RAPID App (RApp) which the RAPID has and continues to develop for field reconnaissance data collection; (iii) staff; and (iv) a headquarters for supporting field missions, data transfer and data analysis. This is a shared-use facility, and its mission is to serve the needs of reconnaissance researchers supported by NSF or other agencies.
Diversity is a core value at the National Science Foundation and the University of Washington. The RAPID Facility shares this commitment. We are focused on building and sustaining an inclusive and equitable research environment for all students, staff, and collaborators. We believe every team member enriches our community by exposing us to a broad range of ways to understand and engage with the world, identify challenges, and to discover, design and deliver solutions.
