Post-Doc Researcher

Institute for Renewable Energy Short description of the position: The Climate Responsive Buildings team within Eurac Research's Energy & Resource Efficient Buildings (EEB) group conduct cutting-edge research in building physics, indoor environmental quality, and climate-responsive building solutions, collaborating closely with industry and international research partners.
We are seeking a high-motivated and self-organized Post-Doc or Senior Researcher to strengthen our building energy modelling capacity and extend it beyond the building envelope, into the domain of its immediate outdoor surroundings. The candidate will play a key role in the Horizon Europe WEAVE (GA 101326291) project: coordinated by Eurac Research. WEAVE aims at developing integrated planning methods to foster climate-responsive design strategies and innovative building envelope solutions by developing a multi-scale and multi-domain modelling architecture that enables to capture the interplay between urban microclimate, in-between spaces, building performance and indoor/outdoor environmental quality.
The core objective of the position is to develop and apply a coupling between a whole-building energy simulation tool and an urban microclimate/CFD simulation tool, using Python-based co-simulation workflows, to assess how building-scale energy and comfort performance interacts with outdoor microclimate conditions and neighbourhood-scale design interventions.
The selected candidate will work in a dynamic and international innovation ecosystem that brings together researchers, companies, and startups, offering excellent opportunities for collaboration, creativity, and professional growth.
Tasks:
Develop, implement, and validate a Python-based coupling between a building energy simulation tool and an urban microclimate/CFD simulation tool for combined building energy and urban microclimate simulation;
Design, run, and analyse coupled building-energy–microclimate simulations to evaluate climate-responsive design strategies at building and neighbourhood scale, including their effect on outdoor thermal comfort, indoor overheating risk, and energy performance;
Post-process and analyse simulation results to compare mitigation and adaptation strategies across different building typologies, user behaviour profiles, and climate scenarios;
Support the technical implementation and simulation work of the pilot case studies, including engagement with pilot site partners and data providers;
Contribute to the development of methodologies for assessing building resilience to temperature-related hazards under selected adaptation and mitigation scenarios;
Contribute to the definition of monitoring campaigns aimed at providing experimental validation of the coupled modelling workflow;
Contribute to evaluating the resilience, co-benefits, environmental impact and cost-effectiveness of the proposed strategies and solutions;
Collaborate with research and industry partners as well as with public authorities in research projects at international level;
Support the acquisition and management of research projects;
Supervise master students and internships;
Write scientific publications and project reports (deliverables, etc.) and engage with wider dissemination of results;
Requirements: PhD in building physics, energy engineering, environmental engineering, or a related field;
Solid knowledge of building physics, building energy modelling, and heat and mass transfer in buildings;
Demonstrated experience in developing and running whole-building energy models using a detailed dynamic building energy simulation tool;
Good programming skills in Python, including experience with automated/parametric simulation workflows;
Research skills, with demonstrated experience in literature review, simulation experiment design, building performance simulation, and data analysis;
Ability to carry out tasks autonomously and pro-actively, and to work in a multi-disciplinary, international research team;
Ability to meet deadlines as part of large teams of researchers, in the role of both team member and task responsible;
Will to take initiative and responsibility in collaborating with research activities beyond your own individual research tasks;
Strong motivation and dedication to develop your skills as researcher and contribute to large research projects;
Excellent written and spoken English skills;
Desirable: Experience with co-simulation or model-coupling frameworks;
Experience with CFD or urban microclimate simulation software (e.g. EnviMet, OpenFoam, Ansys..);
Knowledge of or interest in airflow modelling, resilient cooling, and indoor environmental quality;
Leadership in peer-reviewed publication;
Italian or German language skills;
We offer: The chance to work with local and international research centres, universities and industry partners
The opportuni