Postdoctoral Fellowship, Fuel Cell Thermal Management for Sustainable Aviation

The Program

The NRC’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program offers PDFs access to unique world-class facilities and the opportunity to work alongside multi-disciplinary teams of expert researchers and technicians on projects of critical importance to Canada. PDFs will carry out research on innovative research projects, with opportunities for career development (publications and/or industry interaction).

PDFs will be offered appointments to the staff of the National Research Council on a term basis and will be offered salaries and benefits currently available to Research Officers. Salaries commensurate with experience are taxable and subject to other deductions. As a guide, the current annual PhD recruiting rate is $82,338. In addition PDFs will be allocated a travel fund to support their work.

Project Title

Thermal Management System of a Fuel Cell Aircraft

The Role

As part of a thermal management research team, the PDF will support and conduct research focused on the thermal management system (TMS) for hydrogen fuel cell to power aircraft. The research activities involve investigating, analyzing, and evaluating various TMS solutions currently available in aerospace literature, with the purpose to identify the most suitable models and methods for developing fuel cell powered aircrafts. Through numerical and experimental analysis, the PDF will identify the most effective enhancement opportunities and address remaining design challenges of the architecture. The goal is to design an optimized TMS for a fuel cell, hybrid-electric, medium scale aircraft suitable for all flight phases. 

Education

Ph.D. in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering, obtained within the past 3 years.

Experience

• Experience in conducting research related to hydrogen fuel cells;
• Experience in experimental design and analysis, including data collection and analysis and ensuring data quality;
• Ability to use measurement systems and analysis techniques to characterize flow fields and heat transfer;
• Knowledge of computational fluid dynamics (CFD); and
• Experience in identification of research requirements and reporting through written documentation, presentations and publishing.

Language Requirements

English