What are the responsibilities and job description for the Mechanical Engineering position at ORAU?
Overview
The EPA National Student Services Contract has an immediate opening for a full time Mechanical Engineering position with the Office of Research and Development at the EPA facility in Cincinnati, OH.
The Office of Research and Development at the EPA supports high-quality research to improve the scientific basis for decisions on national environmental issues and help EPA achieve its environmental goals. Research is conducted in a broad range of environmental areas by scientists in EPA laboratories and at universities across the country.
What the EPA project is about
The Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response (CESER) plans, coordinates and conducts an applied, customer-driven, national research and development program to improve decision making by EPA, federal, state, tribal and local agencies, when faced with challenging environmental problems in the built environment. Within CESER, the Water Infrastructure Division (WID) conducts customer-driven research and support, providing scientific leadership on national-scale problems associated with water quality in the built infrastructure.
The home plumbing research project aims to provide data related to premise plumbing issues that impact public health. The Flint lead problem highlighted the need to understand the fate and transport of lead in home plumbing systems. The 2014 Elk River Spill demonstrated that removing contaminants from home plumbing systems can be difficult, and new approaches are needed to better understand contaminant fate and transport in homes. A home plumbing pilot system has been constructed at USEPA in Cincinnati, allowing researchers to investigate these issues. A component of this effort involves modeling of the home plumbing system, which will help expand the predictive capabilities of the home plumbing research that is currently being conducted. This project will involve developing, testing and validating of a home plumbing model and performing testing related to a range of configurations and conditions to help support the water industry, States, and associated Statutes.
Responsibilities
As a team member, you will provide data management, data curation and data analysis support to the home plumbing modeling project. The team member will utilize EPA developed software, including EPANET and EPANET-MSX, and also make use of Python scripts and Excel to perform qualitative and quantitative data analysis. The team member will work with other members of WID’s team to develop and run the models, maintain this system, quality control entered data, and perform downstream analysis. The team member will be a member of a multi-disciplinary research team and will be trained to support the development, maintenance, and analysis using the home plumbing model.
Home Plumbing Modeling development and analysis will include:
- Assist with quality control of entered data (data entered by third party)
- Building EPANET maps of premise plumbing layouts
- Running models in EPANET-MSX using Python scripts
- Organizing and storing simulation results data
- Developing analysis tools for exploring and visualizing Home Plumbing Model data
- Developing scripts to provide reports on the data
- Developing models to predict usage patterns
- Developing models to predict contaminant exposure risks
Communications-related responsibilities will include:
- Participate as a member of a multi-disciplinary research team
- Interact with other members of the development team as well as EPA scientists
- Document code and database development efforts
- May be asked to present work performed as a poster at a scientific conference
Required Knowledge, Skills, Work Experience, and Education
- Coursework that includes fundamental civil, environmental or chemical engineering courses;
- Coursework in hydraulics and/or fluid dynamics;
- Coursework that involves basic computer programming;
- Demonstrated experience with mathematical model use and development;
- Demonstrated experience with Python or MATLAB programming; and
- Strong written, oral and electronic communication skills.
Location: This job will be located EPA’s facility in Cincinnati, OH.
Salary: Selected applicant will become a temporary employee of ORAU and will receive an hourly wage of $23.08 for hours worked.
Hours: Full-time.
Travel: Occasional overnight travel may be required.
Expected start date: The position is full time and expected to begin January 2023. The selected applicant will become a temporary employee of ORAU working as a contractor to EPA. The contract renews each May through 2025.
For more information, contact EPANSSC@orau.org. Do not contact EPA directly.
Qualifications
- Be at least 18 years of age and
- Have earned at least a bachelor’s degree in engineering, mathematics or science from an accredited university or college within the last 24 months and
- Be a citizen of the United States of America or a Legal Permanent Resident.
EPA ORD employees, their spouses, and children are not eligible to participate in this program.
Salary : $23 - $0
