Research Associate in the Field of Knowledge Engineering for Materials Science

The Institute for Advanced Simulations – Materials Data Science and Informatics (IAS-9) focuses on data-driven methods tailored to challenges in the physical sciences and engineering. The research group "Knowledge Engineering for Materials Science" focuses on applying semantic technologies to improve data interoperability, reuse, and reasoning in materials research. A central focus of our work is the transformation of scientific knowledge from unstructured and heterogeneous sources into structured and semantically grounded metadata. To this end, we combine ontologies, knowledge graphs, metadata standards, and Large Language Models (LLMs) to support scalable knowledge extraction from publications, simulation workflows, and research data repositories. Our work contributes to FAIR, AI-ready research data infrastructures and aligns with Helmholtz-wide and national data initiatives, including NFDI-MatWerk.

Your Job

In this position, you will work collaboratively on the following tasks:

• Developing semantic resources and knowledge engineering approaches for materials science, with a focus on structured metadata, semantic interoperability, and knowledge representation.
• Designing methods to extract and integrate scientific knowledge from unstructured and heterogeneous sources, including simulation workflows, publications, and research data repositories.
• Advancing and evaluating the use of LLMs for metadata extraction, schema-guided information extraction, semantic annotation, and ontology-aligned knowledge structuring, including tasks such as entity recognition, relation extraction, attribute/value extraction, and schema population in the materials science domain.
• Developing benchmarks, evaluation datasets, and testing protocols to assess the performance, robustness, and reproducibility of AI and LLM methods for materials science information extraction and metadata generation.
• Contributing to the development and alignment of ontologies, metadata schemas, and related semantic artifacts for materials science and engineering.
• Supporting the integration of semantic and AI technologies into research data management workflows and digital infrastructures, for example within NFDI-MatWerk and related initiatives.
• Disseminating developed tools and concepts through workshops, training activities, and community support in the area of ontology development and semantic data practices.

Your Profile

• University degree (Master, Diploma, or equivalent) in Materials Science or adjacent fields such as Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline. A doctorate is desirable, but not mandatory.
• Strong background in computational materials science or computational physics, including scientific programming skills, particularly in Python. Experience in data processing, workflow development, or automated extraction and structuring of scientific information is highly advantageous.
• Expertise in one or more of the following fields is advantageous: materials informatics, ML/AI methods for materials data, simulation workflows, knowledge graphs, ontology development, LLMs, NLP, or information extraction.
• Knowledge of, or willingness to learn, concepts and tools in the field of semantic technologies and knowledge representation, such as Protégé, OWL, SKOS, RDF, or SPARQL.
• Strong communication and teamwork skills, and the ability to work effectively in an interdisciplinary and collaborative research environment
• Willingness to support scientists in research data management and digital knowledge organization.

Our Benefits for You

We work on highly topical, socially relevant issues and offer you the opportunity to actively shape change! You can expect a wide range of opportunities:

• Meaningful tasks: The position offers a varied and diverse role in an international and multidisciplinary environment and the opportunity to work on state-of-the-art methods at the intersection of LLMs, materials informatics, and knowledge engineering.
• Work-Life-Balance: Optimal conditions for balancing work and private life, as well as a family-friendly company policy. The option of flexible working (in terms of location) is generally available after consultation and in line with upcoming tasks and (on-site) appointments
• Flexibility: Flexible working time models, the option of part-time work close to full- time, and 30 vacation days per year.
• Knowledge & further training: Your professional development is important to us – we provide targeted, individual support
• Career Center: You will receive explicit support with regard to your career development opportunities: https://go.fzj.de/careercenter
• Fair remuneration: Depending on your existing qualifications and the tasks assigned to you, you will be classified in pay grade 13 of the TVöD-Bund (Collective Agreement for the Public Service). All information on the TVöD-Bund collective agreement can be found on theBMI website. The monthly salaries in euros can be found on page 69 ff. of the PDF download
• Additional benefits: Benefit from attractive additional services such as a company pension scheme with employer contribution. In addition to the basic salary, there is an additional year-end bonus under the collective pay agreement amounting to 75%
• Perspective: The position is limited to 3 years with possible long-term prospects
• Support for international employees: Our International Advisory Service makes it easier for international employees to get started

In addition to exciting tasks and a collegial working environment, we offer you much more: https://go.fzj.de/benefits

We are looking forward to your application including a CV, university degree certificates, grade transcripts, two references and/or letters of recommendation (e.g. by a previous supervisor), and a motivation letter. Please ensure that relevant experience is clearly demonstrated and briefly highlighted in your motivation letter.

We welcome applications from people with diverse backgrounds, e.g. in terms of age, gender, disability, sexual orientation / identity, and social, ethnic and religious origin. A diverse and inclusive working environment with equal opportunities in which everyone can realize their potential is important to us.

The following links provide further information on diversity and equal opportunities: https://go.fzj.de/equality and on specific support options: https://go.fzj.de/womens-job-journey

Place of Employment:Aachen

Start Date: nächstmöglicher Termin

Working Hours: 39 Hours / Week

Salary: EG 13 TVöD-Bund

Application Deadline:The job will be advertised until the position has been successfully filled.

Application Process Contact form

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