PhD Candidate on condition assessment of railway infrastructure (100%) in Zürich

ETH Zurich is one of the world’s leading universities specialising in science and technology. It is renowned for its excellent education, its cutting-edge fundamental research and its efforts to put new knowledge and innovations directly into practice. The Chair of Structural Mechanics at the Institute of Structural Engineering (IBK) within the Dept. of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at ETH Zürich, is seeking within the ETH Mobility Initiative Grant: On board Monitoring for Integrated Systems Understanding & Management Improvement in Railways (OMISM) a

The goal of this project, which is in partnership with the SBB, is to shift the current condition assessment and monitoring paradigm for railways. This proposal aims to exploit the power harnessed from on board monitoring data obtained in a continual fashion from in-service trains, to more accurately diagnose condition and faults of railway infrastructure, as well as to provide complementary information regarding the state of the rolling stock. The objective of the Ph.D. work lies in generating and crunching of a Big Data stream on rail infrastructure condition, and in derivation of models of the interdependencies between the rolling stock and the track. A valid system model will allow to minimize the required measurements for revealing information on degradation of tracks, performance of the vehicle, and impacts on user comfort.

We look forward to receiving your online application including the following documents: a letter of motivation, a CV, electronic copies of your academic diplomas and certificates, and contact details for 2 referees preferably. The applications will be reviewed starting December 1st, 2018 with the intent to conclude the search by the beginning of February 2019. Please note that we exclusively accept applications submitted through our online application portal. Applications via email or postal services will not be considered.