PhD Student FPI Reference: PID2025-170514OB-I00 - (R1)

About this position

Context And Mission

We are seeking a PhD student to join the High Performance Computing for Earth Sciences (HPC4ES) team, within the Computational Earth Sciences (CES) group of the BSC Earth Sciences Department. HPC4ES develops methods and tools to understand and improve the computational performance, scalability and energy efficiency of Earth system models and their workflows. The team works closely with climate scientists, model developers and European supercomputing centres.

The position is funded through an FPI grant associated with UNE DT. The doctoral research will address the digital continuum connecting HPC systems, heterogeneous CPU and GPU resources, storage, data services and analysis infrastructures. Weather and climate simulations depend on a complete workflow, from input preparation and model execution to data transfer, post-processing and delivery of scientific results.

Their overall performance depends on how these stages interact, including scheduling delays, data availability and interruptions during execution.

The candidate will investigate methods to predict workflow completion times and resource requirements, and to optimise both individual components and the coordination of computation and data movement. The research will also develop and evaluate AI agents that retain simulation state over weeks or months, monitor progress, diagnose execution problems and carry out verified recovery actions, requesting human intervention when needed. These methods will be assessed using weather and climate workflows, including physical and AI model components, to reduce time to results, resource consumption and manual intervention while preserving scientific validity and reproducibility.

The work will build on the research environment and software developed within CES, including the Autosubmit workflow manager, with applications relevant to Destination Earth, TerraDT and ESiWACE European projects. The candidate will develop a PhD thesis combining original research, experimental evaluation on advanced HPC infrastructure and peer-reviewed publications, while collaborating with an international team working at the intersection of supercomputing, Earth system modelling and artificial intelligence.

Key Duties

Undertake original research centered on High-Performance Computing (HPC) computational performance, expanding the evaluation scope toward end-to-end scientific workflows and incorporating the computational performance of AI models, particularly within earth science applications.

Publish research findings in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals and present results at international scientific and HPC conferences.

Complete a PhD thesis synthesizing the theoretical frameworks, empirical methodologies, and software solutions developed throughout the research line.

Support departmental projects and collaborate on research group initiatives focused on HPC performance and computational science.