Photo: Stephanie Ewing

Diversity and Inclusion Poster created by Sammy Katta

Open positions

Ph.D. Student Opportunity in Modeling Coupled Hydrologic and Biogeochemical Controls on Water Quality

The Montana State Signals in the Soil Project seeks a doctoral student to investigate how coupled hydrologic transport and biogeochemical cycling controls nitrate pollution in soils and shallow aquifers. Our team is working to engineer the capacity to measure in situ water transport and nitrate dynamics at higher frequencies and smaller scales than ever possible before, creating an exciting opportunity to investigate how processes operating at pore scales govern landscape-scale water quality outcomes.

The Ph.D. student will incorporate high-frequency measures of water transport and biogeochemical transformation into our existing environmental reactor modeling framework. Using object-oriented programming and data science approaches, the student will lead the development of scalable simulations of nitrate transport in soils to investigate fine scale controls on soil biogeochemistry.

Funded under NSF's Signals in the Soil Program, the Ph.D. student will join a diverse research team with a rich history of studying the biogeochemical and hydrological processes of agricultural soils, groundwater, and associated surface waters in the Northern Great Plains. Potential applicants can learn more by visiting our project websites (https://www.montana.edu/soilsignals/). The Ph.D. student will be housed in the School of Computing (https://www.cs.montana.edu/) and have close ties with researchers and students in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences (https://landresources.montana.edu/) at Montana State University.

Our team highly values diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We are committed to creating a research environment that is supportive and inclusive of all members, especially those who have traditionally been minoritized in STEM fields. In addition to our research team's inclusivity requirement, MSU offers resources and support for its diverse community (https://www.montana.edu/diversity/resources/index.html).

Interested parties are invited to email a cover letter, CV, and the names and contact information for three references to:

Dr. Ann Marie Reinhold | Environmental Data Science & Simulation | reinhold[at]montana[dot]edu