H2020 MSCA-ITN PhD PhD Fellowship in Real-time Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

AgRefine Marie Skłodowska Curie European Training Network
PhD Position in University College Dublin, Ireland
Topic: Real-time Life Cycle Assessment
School of Biosystems & Food Engineering
http://www.ucd.ie/biosystems/
www.agrefine.eu


AgRefine - A Disruptive Innovative Cooperative Entrepreneurial (DICE) education, training and skills development programme rolling out the next generation of Agri Biorefinery and Valorisation Bioeconomy leaders.

AgRefine Network Goal - To train PhD students to become the bioeconomy leaders of tomorrow with the necessary skills and knowledge to position Europe as the global leader in developing an agri-bioeconomy industry based on advanced biorefinery technologies.

The AgRefine Network is made up of: 6 countries, 5 European Universities, 1 applied research institute, 8 industry partners, 1 regulatory body, 1 industry network.

Project 12: Real-time Life Cycle Assessment.

Bioeconomy design strategies must be developed to minimise environmental trade-offs during the transition to sustainability. Increasingly life cycle assessment based on lab scale data is required to prove the sustainability aspects of developing clean technologies. This frequently results in a much higher impact as few LCA studies focus on scale-up of LCA data. A scalable LCA framework is needed to support AgRefine’s early stage product development and to provide it with the basis from which a pilot scale process design can be created. Based in UCD under the supervision of Dr. F Murphy, the candidate will develop a real-time biosensor-linked life cycle assessment framework which will evaluate both environmental aspects of sustainability. The LCA framework will be scalable to produce accurate results for technologies at different stages of development i.e. across TRL levels. The candidate will develop the framework using experimental data and will develop a scaling mechanism while on secondment at TU Wien. The LCA framework will be validated on industrial scale processes.

Relevant disciplines; To fulfil this role the candidate must have obtained a relevant Master level degree in a discipline with a strong focus on; Process/Chemical/Biochemical Engineering, Life Cycle Assessment, Modelling using Python or similar programming languages. The candidate should have knowledge of computer programming and process simulation tools (e.g. ASPEN).

Eligibility criteria
H2020 MSCA eligibility criteria: Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) must, at the date of recruitment by the host organisation, have less than four years of full-time equivalent research experience and have not been awarded a doctoral degree. Full-Time Equivalent Research Experience is measured from the date when the researcher obtained the degree entitling him/her to embark on a doctorate (either in the country in which the degree was obtained or in the country in which the researcher is recruited, even if a doctorate was never started or envisaged).
Researchers must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Ireland for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the recruitment date.
Applicants must have an ability to understand and express themselves in both written and spoken English to a level that is sufficiently high for them to derive the full benefit from the network training. Candidates must have excellent proficiency in written and spoken English (CEFR Level C1) and provide evidence that they fulfil the specific UCD criteria .