Chemical Characterization Research
The EPA National Student Services Contract has an immediate opening for a full-time contractor position; Chemical Characterization Research with the Office of Research and Development at the EPA facility in Research Triangle Park, NC.
Salary: $31.38 per hour.
Travel: Occasional overnight travel is not required.
Required Skills:
- Knowledge of basic chemistry in terms of molecular structure, chemical naming conventions, and physicochemical properties;
- Experience programming in the Java, R, and/or Python languages;
- Experience with quantitative techniques, basic statistics, and use of spreadsheets; and
- Strong reading comprehension skills and experience logically interpreting pieces of data.
Desired Skills:
- Mater’s coursework in statistics, data science, user experience and design, and/or data analysis;
- Experience with computational or mathematical modeling (i.e. cheminformatics) and data science techniques; and
- Experience with databases.
Qualifications
- Be at least 18 years of age and
- Have earned at least a master’s degree in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, applied sciences, environmental health, exposure science, computer sciences, information technology, data science, or a related discipline 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.
What the EPA project is about
The Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure (CCTE) supports ORD by providing solutions-driven research to rapidly evaluate the potential human health and environmental risks due to exposures to environmental stressors and ensure the integrity of the freshwater environment and its capacity to support human well-being. CCTE researchers are developing and applying cutting edge innovations in methods to rapidly evaluate chemical toxicity, transport, and exposure to people and environments. Within CCTE, the Chemical Characterization and Exposure Division (CCED) performs research to develop and advance analytical chemistry, computational chemistry, and cheminformatic approaches that are critical to the rapid characterization of the presence, structural characteristics, and properties of chemicals that underlie chemical exposure, environmental fate, toxicokinetics and toxicity.
This is an excellent opportunity for a recent master’s graduate to collaborate with EPA’s research team. Research experience includes:
- Summarize work in internal reports/memos to be used by EPA scientists ;
- Collecting, curating (e.g., drawing chemical structures), and organizing data in databases on QACs including relevant metadata (e.g., CAS number, chemical name, physicochemical properties); and
- Networking and exploring many career paths at EPA.