MIT hiring: Climatic effects of limited nuclear wars and "averting armageddon"

By christian.r @ 2024-03-15T15:14 (+16)

MIT is hiring for a postdoc "to enhance understanding of the climactic effects of limited nuclear wars by studying the fundamentals of how large-scale fires are initiated by nuclear explosions, the probability of their occurring, and the expected soot loading produced by such fires."

Importantly, this position will be working with the Nuclear Policy Program  at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace  on a big new project called "Averting Armageddon: Reducing the Risks of Inadvertent Escalation of Nuclear War." (Full disclosure: I recommended the $2.4 million grant from Founders Pledge that funds project Averting Armageddon) 

Carnegie's James Acton provides some background here.

I think Averting Armageddon is one of the best projects to reduce catastrophic risks from nuclear war; the work is designed to address several of the neglected issues to the "right" of "boom" that I write about in my report on nuclear philanthropy. The tl;dr (from Longview's Matt Gentzel and me here) of this idea is:

Perhaps worst of all, only a tiny fraction of philanthropic funding goes to one of the most important problems in the field: how to keep nuclear war from escalating after the first bomb has gone off. The problem of further escalation is the fine dividing line between a horrific but local humanitarian disaster and a civilization-threatening conflagration, yet this issue is often dismissed as an outdated Cold War concern. As one of the experts interviewed for the Founders Pledge report put it, “For much of the last 30 years post-Cold War, the idea of studying escalation management in a nuclear war was just not where the times were taking us.” Unfortunately, the times are taking us there now.

 This is also an opportunity for more independent work in the controversial area of nuclear winter research, and for a quant-focused PhD to get policy skills. I would therefore be very excited for high-quality applicants to apply to this job.  

(Note that I don't have any involvement with the hiring and won't be able to answer questions about the job. I am posting it here at the request of James Acton.)

Job Description

POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, Nuclear Science and Engineering, to enhance understanding of the climactic effects of limited nuclear wars by studying the fundamentals of how large-scale fires are initiated by nuclear explosions, the probability of their occurring, and the expected soot loading produced by such fires.  Responsibilities include carrying out literature reviews of existing work and identifying key disagreements and their origins; researching soot generation in limited nuclear wars, including through the use of code for modeling large-scale fires; validating findings against published research; analyzing data to reach novel conclusions; summarizing research results and present findings at lab meetings and externally to both technical and policy audiences; drafting at least one technical paper for submission to a peer-reviewed journal and one book chapter to summarize key findings for a policy audience; and performing other related duties as required, including work performed at lower levels, when necessary.  

 

Job Requirements

REQUIRED: Ph.D. in a relevant quantitative technical discipline (i.e., physics, applied mathematics, engineering, environmental science); practical experience with coding and numerical modeling; proven ability to craft research agenda, review and analyze the existing literature, and synthesize research findings; and excellent command of written and spoken English, including the ability to structure complex technical documents and write clear and precise prose.  PREFERRED:  experience with modelling large-scale fires, knowledge of nuclear weapons and their effects, experience with knowledge transfer in a public-policy setting, and knowledge of the LaTeX typesetting language. 

Salary: $80,000/year

This is a full-time, one-year position that is renewable for up to one additional year pending satisfactory performance.

Will be expected to work in residence at MIT.