Vibrational Microspectroscopist for detecting and identifying irregularly shaped particles

Overview

The Materials Measurement Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is
seeking qualified persons (U.S. Citizens preferred) to develop analytical tools needed to monitor and
characterize micro and nanoplastic (MNP) particles. The applicant will use commercial optical
photothermal infrared (OPTIR) microscopy and other vibrational spectroscopy and imaging methods to
improve identification of irregularly shaped particles less than 10 μm.

Qualifications

• Ph.D degree in physical sciences/materials engineering/chemical engineering
• Expertise in high-resolution chemical mapping of materials and tissues with OPTIR (preferred), Raman, or IR microspectroscopy
• Expertise in multivariate statistical methods used for evaluating vibrational spectroscopy data (OPTIR Preferred), including chemometrics, adapted ML tools, or other applied methods
• Demonstrate successful participation as a member to multidisciplinary research teams

Research Proposal

Key responsibilities will include but are not limited to:

• Develop methods using OPTIR microscopy to characterize nonspherical polymeric particles (<10 μm), including hyperspectral, imaging, and polarization-dependent approaches
• Design and evaluate experimental systems to examine signal origin, measurement artifacts, and depth-dependent compositional relationships in OPTIR with pristine and chemically modified control samples
• Develop performance metric benchmarks for OPTIR measurements that can be used for evaluating data and method transferability to widely used IR-based and Raman techniques
• Contribute to NIST efforts for evaluating and characterizing crystallinity, molecular structure, and composition of candidate reference materials, which include irregularly shaped, polymeric particles and asymmetric materials arrays