Research Associate at Fermi Research Alliance, LLC in Batavia, Illinois

Job Description:

Job Description

Open Date: March 2, 2021

Close Date: March 31, 2021

We Are:

Fermilab is America's premier laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. We support discovery science experiments in Illinois and South Dakota and at locations around the world, including Canada, mountaintops in Arizona and Chile, and the South Pole. Members of our Scientific Computing Division collaborate on scientific projects using our computing expertise to develop and apply simulation and analysis tools to achieve success in expanding knowledge.

The Scientific Computing Division is seeking a highly motivated individual to fill a Research Associate position. The successful candidate will employ High Performance Computing (HPC) techniques and resources to advance Fermilab's mission in the areas of computational accelerator physics and high energy physics (HEP) data analytics through participation in two DOE funded projects SciDAC projects: ComPASS4 (accelerator modeling https://compass.fnal.gov) and "HEP Data Analytics on HPC" (https://computing.fnal.gov/hep-on-hpc). Both projects involve collaboration with multiple laboratories and institutions, using some of the world's most advanced computing facilities such as NERSC, ALCF, and OLCF. The successful candidate will work with SciDAC ASCR FASTMath and RAPIDS Institutes, along with HEP partners to best utilize high-performance Python and C++ libraries.

The position is for a period of up to three (3) years, with the potential for extension considered on a yearly basis thereafter. Work will include developing and optimizing parallel algorithms for computationally expensive problems in the areas of accelerator modeling and high energy physics analyses with an overall goal to enable large-scale parallelism and leverage accelerators available at HPC facilities.

ComPASS4 SciDAC project activities could include:

Developing capabilities and applying the Synergia (synergia.fnal.gov) accelerator modeling framework to:

• Apply parallel optimization techniques to improve particle accelerator designs


• Investigate the beam physics of space charge compensation


• Develop simulations of multi-stage plasma and conventional accelerators

HEP Data Analytics on HPC SciDAC project activities may include:

• Collaborating with several HEP experiments including CMS, ATLAS, NOvA and DUNE to make physics analyses suitable for running at HPC centers.


• Working to develop HPC workflow components for the ICARUS experiment, demonstrating large-scale parallelism with LArSoft and art frameworks in use within the neutrino program.


• Developing computationally expensive parameter estimation and analysis algorithms for use in HEP analysis.


• Continuing work on performance and other HPC enhancements to statistical methods and procedures, including the Feldman-Cousins procedure used within the neutrino community and introducing Bayesian analysis techniques into NOvA and DUNE.

We Are Looking For

• PhD or Master's degree in Physics, Computer Science or related discipline with a strong emphasis in Computational Science.


• Software development of scientific applications in a collaborative software development setting is required.


• Experience developing and running applications in a parallel computing environment is required.


• Experience with Python, or similar high-level analysis language for analysis, data science, and computational tasks is required.


• Experience developing and running parallel software applications with MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, or related parallelization tools and compilers is highly desirable


• Experience with C++ and Python is highly desirable


• Experience working with large-scale datasets highly desirable

Application Instructions

Interested candidates should submit via Academic Jobs Online: 1) Cover letter, 2) Curriculum Vitae, 3) Research Statement, 4) Publication List and 5) Three Reference Letters (to be submitted by the reference writers at the AJO site).

https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/18231

For general information about this position, please contact Eric Stern at egstern@fnal.govor Jim Kowalkowski at jbk@fnal.gov

Fermilab is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Underrepresented groups/Women/Disabled/Veterans are encouraged to apply.

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