Postdoc position on “Creating bio-inspired co-evolutionary incentive systems to promote recycling, using Internet of Things technologies” in Zürich

Research at the Professorship of Computational Social Science (COSS) is focused on participatory, resilient and sustainable smart cities, 

• bringing modeling and computer simulation of social processes and transportation phenomena together with technology, experimental, and data-driven work,
• combining the perspectives of different scientific disciplines (e.g. social science, computer science, complexity science, transportation science, logistics, and sociophysics),
• bridging fundamental and applied work,
• developing digital tools to support people and studying the resulting behavior.

You will produce a simulation program demonstrating self-organizing logistic networks that become more circular and sustainable over time. 

You will create novel research breakthroughs and contribute to the ambitious ERC Advanced Investigator Grant on “Co-Evolving City Life” (CoCi) in subject areas connected to smart cities and digital societies. Your research focus will be on “Sustainable Cities and Coordination”. Given recent digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (sensor and communication networks), Artificial Intelligence, and blockchain technology, one can expect that production, logistics, and even waste, are becoming increasingly smart. Ideally, you will study how the convergence of these technologies can be used to fuel new approaches towards more sustainable production and logistics in an urban context. 

The research question we would like to answer is, how the approach of self-organized and federated, learning, networked multi-agent systems can be used to create socio-economic incentives that would promote the emergence of closed loops in a material supply network and could thereby boost the formation of a circular and sharing economy. We want to study, how a multi-dimensional real-time measurement, feedback and coordination system would have to be designed and operated in order to reach this goal. 

Together with our team, you will work on the mechanisms and effects of multi-dimensional real-time coordination, perform related agent-based simulations, and work towards demonstrating the approach in an application project. It will be great to couple the simulation program with a sensor-based environment (Raspberry Pi or Arduino, or other) that responds to measurements, flexibly adapts, and self-organizes. You will be the key researcher addressing these challenges or a subset of them (please specify), collaborating with a highly motivated team.

• You should have an excellent research background in several of the following areas (please specify): agent-based modelling, complexity science, particularly self-organization based on real-time feedback, and bio-inspired approaches involving co-evolutionary processes.
• Excellent scientific and computational skills, English language skills, social skills, and international experience are required.
• Experience with Internet of Things technologies would be a plus.
• We expect you to appreciate collaborating in a diverse, interdisciplinary and multicultural team to jointly and systematically address grand scientific challenges.

ETH Zurich is a family-friendly employer with excellent working conditions. You can look forward to an exciting working environment, cultural diversity and attractive offers and benefits.