Senior Scientist, Materials performance and interactions

at  VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd

WE ARE NOW LOOKING FOR A SENIOR SCIENTIST TO JOIN OUR MATERIALS PERFORMANCE AND INTERACTIONS TEAM.

We are looking for a Senior Scientist to develop sustainable material solutions for green transition, specializing in surface and tribological phenomena in different applications. High performance and reliability together with energy and material efficiencies are key features of the engineering applications. With us, you will be developing new concepts and solutions for experimental and modelling approaches to support sustainable technologies. Our research topics often stem from real problems, so knowing the field in industry is essential to be able to develop bigger concepts.
Our team focuses on assessing the degradation of materials, which is a key factor in finding ways to develop materials and solutions enabling resource savings and higher operation performance for the materials entire life cycle.

We specialize in friction, wear and fatigue control in wide range of applications, including inorganic and organic materials. These themes form the backbone of our projects:

• Resource sufficiency via long lifecycle, facilitated by durable materials.
• Energy efficiency via eliminating surface damages and power losses, as well as optimizing friction during operation.
• Material and manufacturing solutions to support emerging technologies, such as electrification, hydrogen technologies and utilization of other alternative fuels.
• Finding out the root causes for failures to enable the finding of better materials for the applications with complex requirements.

Read more about our research:
A day in the life of a Corrosion scientist -read what a typical day for looks like for your future colleague Andressa
Corrosion in biomass power plants – | VTT News (vttresearch.com)

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR:

• Deep understanding about engineering materials technology and surface related phenomena in tribology and a cross-scientific mindset.
• Good general view on the field of relevant industries.
• MSc or PhD in the field of tribology, engineering materials, material physics or surface science
• As an experienced researcher, you may have established networks both in academia and industry and like to widen those nationally and globally.
• Fluent written and spoken English, Finnish skills are an advantage.
• Ability to design test setups/modifications and series.
• Experience or knowledge in funding applications and preparations.

You have knowledge and background in the following topics:

• Tribology (friction, wear and lubrication) and material science, and the characterisation methods involved.
• Surface phenomena and material interaction as well as technologies applied to tribology, such as coatings, thin films and barrier layers.
• Experience of hands-on experimental research, data analysis and/or computational modelling methods.

• Act as a core group member in the research on material solutions supporting sustainable technologies, participating in experimental and possibly modelling work, depending on your background.
• As a project group member or a project manager, you ensure that the defined tasks are performed on time and the results are delivered and reported with high quality.
• Active participation in project planning and preparation, including active communication with customers and partners, as well as writing proposals together with your colleagues.
• Actively engage with our customers, engage in sales, support in preparing our customer proposals and promote our research activities.
• Networking and acting as a thought leader in your area of expertise.
• Communicating results impactfully in scientific publications and presentations, as well as with industry projects.
• Finding solutions on how our experimental research can be utilised in computational materials science.
• Conducting contract research projects for customer applications.