Department:

Technology and operations management, section Business Information Management (BIM).

Position:

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) invites applications for a two-year post-doctoral position (from 1 October 2019 to 1 October 2021) in Information Systems. The position is in RSM’s department of technology and operations management, section Business Information Management (BIM).

Project description:

The project is called the Flexibility for Smart Urban Energy Systems (FlexSUS), which is a European project involving several universities and municipalities in Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

FlexSUS gears municipalities towards reaching their sustainability goals and EU's desire for Positive Energy Districts in developing a decision support platform that represents the local energy systems within the cities’ urban infrastructures. The proposed platform integrates regulatory challenges (existing and anticipated ones) into energy planning that is localised at city level and within districts of each partner city. The cities define the sustainability targets and guide the development of the tool to the needs of the administration and their citizens. Sustainability targets are not restricted only to CO2 reduction but also cover an array of socio-economic, behavioural and cultural elements that make modern cities so challenging for energy planning applications. To address these challenges, the platform is open source and open access, designed to facilitate actions for systems integration and support the uptake of RES including city planners at every step of the process.

RSM’s role in FlexSUS is essential and includes modelling the operation of energy sectors, their interactions, and devising promising solution scenarios for certain efficiency and sustainability objectives. Apart from its practical implications for municipalities, FlexSUS contributes theoretically to examine the importance of energy sector coupling in the entire spectrum of flexibility. Having large real-world datasets, a highly skilled team with diverse range of expertise, industry and academic partners with hands on practical knowledge, FlexSUS can greatly explore the importance of energy sector coupling.

Requirements and qualifications:

We are looking for candidates with:

• a PhD in economics, operation management, computer science, electrical/computer/mechanical/industrial engineering, management science, physics/mathematics, information systems, or related fields

• experience with mathematical modelling, simulation, and energy systems

• a strong commitment to high-quality research

• evidence of the ability to conduct impactful work and to publish in top journals.

Fixed-term contract: Two years.

Employment conditions

The gross full-time monthly salary of the postdoctoral position will be in accordance with the salary scales for postdoctoral researchers at Dutch universities, scale 11.

The postdoctoral researcher’s appointment will be originally for the period of one year, with the possibility for extension. The appointment preferably commences on 1 October , 2019. EUR has attractive employment conditions, which include a holiday allowance of 8 per cent, an end-of-year bonus of 8.3 per cent, and a generous number of vacation days.