Jul 1, 2022

New CLF Staff Needed to support ARPA-E Project

The Carbon Leadership Forum Seeks Three New Staff Members to Support Carbon-Storing Building Research

The promise of radically decarbonizing the building sector lies, in part, with replacing high carbon materials with lower carbon alternatives. One of the most promising areas of research has been on materials that are not simply less carbon intensive, but those which actually draw down atmospheric carbon and store it over time. Building materials that make use of agricultural feedstocks, wood products, and direct carbon utilization all have these properties. Still, evaluating their merits has been challenging since these processes fall outside the standard practice of carbon accounting for building materials.

Thanks to a new research initiative from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, the Carbon Leadership Forum will investigate the science and methods of carbon drawdown and storage, and develop a robust LCA framework and ecosystem of tools that can support the flow of data on novel materials into robust, comparative Whole Building Life Cycle Analysis (WBLCA) tools.

ARPA-E will be supporting 18 material and building design teams for the “Harnessing Emissions into Structures Taking Inputs from the Atmosphere” (HESTIA) program, each developing a negative carbon material or building system. CLF, along with an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Washington, will lead the Parametric Open Data (POD) | LCA project during which we will work closely with each HESTIA team to analyze their performance at a material and building scale. This work will be deeply collaborative, drawing from a team of UW researchers with expertise in climate modeling, forestry, dynamic LCA, material science, design, engineering, data science, and tool development.

To support this project, we expect to hire a cohort of three new staff members with complementary abilities. Their work will primarily focus on ARPA-E deliverables, but it is possible that their expertise will be brought in to support other related projects at the CLF. Since we can imagine a mix of different skill sets meeting the needs of this project, we have posted five positions where candidates might fit. This provides us with sufficient flexibility to staff the project based on the qualifications of our candidate pool.

We expect that candidates will review all job descriptions and apply for the one that they believe themselves to be most qualified for. And if a candidate applies for one role, that does not preclude them from pursuing another at any point during the application and review process.

Examples of experience we are looking for in this cohort include:

Demonstrated commitment to value diversity and contribute to an inclusive working and learning environment.
Technical project management
Knowledge of LCA data, methods and application and understanding of principles of relevant LCA standards.
Data visualization
Strong written and verbal communication skills
Academic research
Understanding of Python, R, Java D3 or any similar tool
Data analysis
Institutional and governmental grant reporting
Carbon accounting, building performance analysis, tool development and/or other forms of research and analysis related to the building, industry, forestry, or related sectors.
Experience in the construction and design industry
Budget management

If you are interested in supporting this frontier research and joining the CLF in its commitment to accurate, trusted, rigorous, and open access LCA data and tools, we encourage you review the job descriptions and apply. This project is expected to kick-off in fall 2022. Applications received by 8/10 will be given priority.If you have any questions, please reach out to info@clf.org.