MSCA Doctoral Candidate Position in i3WaterS: Optimal WDS management during critical scenarios [...]
Descrizione dell'offerta
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II
Organisation/Company UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II Department Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Research Field Computer science Engineering » Computer engineering Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Positions PhD Positions Application Deadline 30 Sep 2026 - 23:59 (Europe/Madrid) Country Italy Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Offer Starting Date 1 Nov 2026 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Horizon Europe - MSCA Reference Number i3WaterSDC13 Marie Curie Grant Agreement Number 101227354 Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No
Offer Description University of Naples Federico II (UNINA), Italy, is recruiting a Doctoral Candidate (DC) within the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network i3WaterS – Intelligent, Innovative and Integrative Water Systems. The successful candidate will be enrolled in a PhD programme at UPC and will work under the supervision of Cristiana Di Cristo, Full Professor of Hydraulics at the University of Naples Federico II.
i3WaterS brings together leading universities, research centers, technology developers and water utilities across Europe. The project will train 15 Doctoral Candidates to develop innovative AI-driven solutions for intelligent, resilient and sustainable water systems, contributing to the digital transformation of one of the most critical infrastructures for society. The risk of water scarcity due to climate change and human activities is real. i3WaterS stands for Intelligent, Innovative, Integrative Water Systems and addresses the urgent need to optimize water resources management by providing a comprehensive solution to upgrade, optimally operate and maintain water distribution systems (WDSs). For the first time, a unique holistic approach will find the key interrelationships between external, day-to-day and extreme, factors and WDS failures, to advise actions and protocols to make WDSs robust and reliable. At research level, i3WaterS project focuses on the integration of data, specific expert knowledge and computational simulations tools, introducing the most advanced data-driven and artificial intelligent techniques beyond the State of the Art, that plugged in a newly developed intelligent decision support system (IDSSs), working as an umbrella for a set of 14 independent solutions that enables assisting the WDSs management into scientifically driven decision-making. The incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) will help to increase the autonomy of some parts of the WDS, those suitable under a paradigm of maximum security, safety and robustness, and the project will take care to frame this autonomy in a global and general concept of intelligent assistance, including human validation in each steps where it makes sense 15 Doctorate Candidates will learn from a network of experts on network monitoring, data management, algorithms, AI, modeling, microbiology, ethics and industrial partners, and by participating in a specifically designed training programme, they will develop the required cross competencies to find, test and innovate over a solution that will be fundamental to meet the sustainable development goals on water. Just as important, i3WaterS provide a new generation of internationally connected professionals with unique skills for the development of thriving careers in the critical infrastructures.
Research Objectives The main research goal of iWaterS is to provide, for the first time, rational analyses and explainable intelligent decision support of WDS to increase resilience to day-to-day incidents and to extreme events in the context of climate change such as floods or droughts, through new interdisciplinary and integral approaches for exploiting datasets (on-line, off-line), intelligent models (data-driven, numerical) and simulation results (digital twins, multiagent systems).
The specific research objective of this call is to develop intelligent methodologies for the analysis, management, and optimization of Water Distribution Systems (WDSs) under critical operating conditions, including infrastructure failures, climate change impacts, and accidental or intentional contamination events, with the aim of ensuring the continuity, reliability, and safety of drinking water services in terms of both water quantity and quality while enhancing the security and resilience of WDSs.
The candidate will contribute to achieving this objective through the following sub-objectives: 1) Identify and characterize future critical scenarios affecting Water Distribution Systems (WDSs), including infrastructure failures, variations in water demand and the number of users, climate change impacts, and accidental or intentional contamination events, through data collection and analysis, and predict system responses using numerical simulations and/or complex network approaches. Given the high level of uncertainty associated with input data and future scenarios, both deterministic and stochastic modelling techniques will be employed.
2) Develop and apply optimization models to evaluate and compare management strategies under the identified scenarios, assessing the reliability, resilience, and adaptive capacity of WDSs. The outcomes will support the development of innovative methodologies and practical decision-support tools for improving resource management, operational efficiency, and the security of drinking water distribution systems. Expected Results:
1) Support water utilities in enhancing the safety, reliability, and resilience ofWDSs, ensuring the continuous provision of high-quality drinking water to consumers.
2) Produce innovative tools and management strategies for the efficient operation of WDSs under critical scenarios, preventing service disruptions, mitigating water quality deterioration, and improving the systems' capacity to respond and adapt to infrastructure failures, climate change impacts, and contamination events.
Training Programme The training proposed by i3WaterS will uniquely integrate decades of knowledge, expertise & achievements in disciplines such as civil and computer engineering, hydroinformatics, geomechanics, applied mathematics, multiobjective optimization, high performance computing, big data, artificial intelligence, modelling, and data management, including soft skills facilitated by academic and non-academic partners. Apart from the PhD thesis done under a multidisciplinar and international supervisory panel composed by an advisor, a coadvisor from a second i3WaterS university and an industrial mentor linked to a real water facility, the program includes an International Doctoral School with six training chapters that take place under an international mobility structure (Barcelona (Spain), Dublin (Ireland), Bordeaux (France), Delft (The Netherlands), Brussels (Belgium), NewCastle (UK)). The contents of the training programme include the most relevant and advanced topics related with smart resilient WDSs and soft skills for the researchers and professionals of the future. The following topics are included in these training chapters:
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Explainable AI and Trustworthy AI.
Knowledge Representation and Semantic Technologies.
Multi-Agent Systems and Intelligent Decision Support Systems.
Digital Twins and Smart Water Systems.
Innovation, entrepreneurship and technology transfer.
Scientific communication and transferable skills.
International mobility will easy connections and visits to water facilities all over Europe, and industrial secondments will give a realistic perspective. Two International Secondments in other second real water facilities will allow extensive testing and validation of thesis findings to guarantee real contribution to the state of art. These Secondments into industrial partners are included with two aims: testing the PhD findings in a different water facility from the one supporting the project development, and to allow providing specialised training to the water utilities staff.
Requirements Research Field Computer science Education Level Master Degree or equivalent
Research Field Engineering » Computer engineering Education Level Master Degree or equivalent
Skills/Qualifications
Knowledge of the functioning and management ofwater distribution systems
Knowledge of drinking water quality requirements
Data-driven models
Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
Optimization models and Complex Network approach
Decision Support Systems
Python,Matlab, Java or related programming languages
Data integration and interoperability
Documenting in Latex
Teamwork
Specific Requirements
Candidates must comply with all applicable eligibility requirements and regulations of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Networks programme.
Doctoral Status: Applicants must not possess a doctoral degree at the date of recruitment.
Mobility Rule: Applicants must comply with the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) mobility rule. At the date of recruitment, candidates must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Italy for more than 12 months during the 36 months immediately preceding the recruitment date. Short stays such as holidays are not taken into account.
Employment conditions are subject to the legislation and internal regulations of the recruiting institution.
Languages ENGLISH Level Good
Additional Information Selection process
Once the application submission period has ended, the secretary of the selection committee may contact applicants to request any mandatory documentation that has not been provided, or to ask for additional documentation needed to evaluate the application. The Evaluation Committee will carry out an initial assessment of the eligible candidates’ CVs and, if deemed appropriate, will invite those who pass this stage to take part in tests and/or interviews. The date and location of the interviews and/or tests will be set by the committee and will be communicated in advance to the selected candidates via the email address provided in their application. . Candidates must be available to carry out the test and/or interview using an online platform.
Additional comments
Contract duration: 36 months. In the event that the successful candidate is recruited after 1 January 2027, the contract duration will be adjusted accordingly and will end no later than 31 December 2029.
Number of offers available 1 Company/Institute UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II Country Italy City Napoli Postal Code 80125 Geofield
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Organisation/Company UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II Department Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Research Field Computer science Engineering » Computer engineering Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Positions PhD Positions Application Deadline 30 Sep 2026 - 23:59 (Europe/Madrid) Country Italy Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Offer Starting Date 1 Nov 2026 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Horizon Europe - MSCA Reference Number i3WaterSDC13 Marie Curie Grant Agreement Number 101227354 Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No
Offer Description University of Naples Federico II (UNINA), Italy, is recruiting a Doctoral Candidate (DC) within the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network i3WaterS – Intelligent, Innovative and Integrative Water Systems. The successful candidate will be enrolled in a PhD programme at UPC and will work under the supervision of Cristiana Di Cristo, Full Professor of Hydraulics at the University of Naples Federico II.
i3WaterS brings together leading universities, research centers, technology developers and water utilities across Europe. The project will train 15 Doctoral Candidates to develop innovative AI-driven solutions for intelligent, resilient and sustainable water systems, contributing to the digital transformation of one of the most critical infrastructures for society. The risk of water scarcity due to climate change and human activities is real. i3WaterS stands for Intelligent, Innovative, Integrative Water Systems and addresses the urgent need to optimize water resources management by providing a comprehensive solution to upgrade, optimally operate and maintain water distribution systems (WDSs). For the first time, a unique holistic approach will find the key interrelationships between external, day-to-day and extreme, factors and WDS failures, to advise actions and protocols to make WDSs robust and reliable. At research level, i3WaterS project focuses on the integration of data, specific expert knowledge and computational simulations tools, introducing the most advanced data-driven and artificial intelligent techniques beyond the State of the Art, that plugged in a newly developed intelligent decision support system (IDSSs), working as an umbrella for a set of 14 independent solutions that enables assisting the WDSs management into scientifically driven decision-making. The incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) will help to increase the autonomy of some parts of the WDS, those suitable under a paradigm of maximum security, safety and robustness, and the project will take care to frame this autonomy in a global and general concept of intelligent assistance, including human validation in each steps where it makes sense 15 Doctorate Candidates will learn from a network of experts on network monitoring, data management, algorithms, AI, modeling, microbiology, ethics and industrial partners, and by participating in a specifically designed training programme, they will develop the required cross competencies to find, test and innovate over a solution that will be fundamental to meet the sustainable development goals on water. Just as important, i3WaterS provide a new generation of internationally connected professionals with unique skills for the development of thriving careers in the critical infrastructures.
Research Objectives The main research goal of iWaterS is to provide, for the first time, rational analyses and explainable intelligent decision support of WDS to increase resilience to day-to-day incidents and to extreme events in the context of climate change such as floods or droughts, through new interdisciplinary and integral approaches for exploiting datasets (on-line, off-line), intelligent models (data-driven, numerical) and simulation results (digital twins, multiagent systems).
The specific research objective of this call is to develop intelligent methodologies for the analysis, management, and optimization of Water Distribution Systems (WDSs) under critical operating conditions, including infrastructure failures, climate change impacts, and accidental or intentional contamination events, with the aim of ensuring the continuity, reliability, and safety of drinking water services in terms of both water quantity and quality while enhancing the security and resilience of WDSs.
The candidate will contribute to achieving this objective through the following sub-objectives: 1) Identify and characterize future critical scenarios affecting Water Distribution Systems (WDSs), including infrastructure failures, variations in water demand and the number of users, climate change impacts, and accidental or intentional contamination events, through data collection and analysis, and predict system responses using numerical simulations and/or complex network approaches. Given the high level of uncertainty associated with input data and future scenarios, both deterministic and stochastic modelling techniques will be employed.
2) Develop and apply optimization models to evaluate and compare management strategies under the identified scenarios, assessing the reliability, resilience, and adaptive capacity of WDSs. The outcomes will support the development of innovative methodologies and practical decision-support tools for improving resource management, operational efficiency, and the security of drinking water distribution systems. Expected Results:
1) Support water utilities in enhancing the safety, reliability, and resilience ofWDSs, ensuring the continuous provision of high-quality drinking water to consumers.
2) Produce innovative tools and management strategies for the efficient operation of WDSs under critical scenarios, preventing service disruptions, mitigating water quality deterioration, and improving the systems' capacity to respond and adapt to infrastructure failures, climate change impacts, and contamination events.
Training Programme The training proposed by i3WaterS will uniquely integrate decades of knowledge, expertise & achievements in disciplines such as civil and computer engineering, hydroinformatics, geomechanics, applied mathematics, multiobjective optimization, high performance computing, big data, artificial intelligence, modelling, and data management, including soft skills facilitated by academic and non-academic partners. Apart from the PhD thesis done under a multidisciplinar and international supervisory panel composed by an advisor, a coadvisor from a second i3WaterS university and an industrial mentor linked to a real water facility, the program includes an International Doctoral School with six training chapters that take place under an international mobility structure (Barcelona (Spain), Dublin (Ireland), Bordeaux (France), Delft (The Netherlands), Brussels (Belgium), NewCastle (UK)). The contents of the training programme include the most relevant and advanced topics related with smart resilient WDSs and soft skills for the researchers and professionals of the future. The following topics are included in these training chapters:
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Explainable AI and Trustworthy AI.
Knowledge Representation and Semantic Technologies.
Multi-Agent Systems and Intelligent Decision Support Systems.
Digital Twins and Smart Water Systems.
Innovation, entrepreneurship and technology transfer.
Scientific communication and transferable skills.
International mobility will easy connections and visits to water facilities all over Europe, and industrial secondments will give a realistic perspective. Two International Secondments in other second real water facilities will allow extensive testing and validation of thesis findings to guarantee real contribution to the state of art. These Secondments into industrial partners are included with two aims: testing the PhD findings in a different water facility from the one supporting the project development, and to allow providing specialised training to the water utilities staff.
Requirements Research Field Computer science Education Level Master Degree or equivalent
Research Field Engineering » Computer engineering Education Level Master Degree or equivalent
Skills/Qualifications
Knowledge of the functioning and management ofwater distribution systems
Knowledge of drinking water quality requirements
Data-driven models
Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
Optimization models and Complex Network approach
Decision Support Systems
Python,Matlab, Java or related programming languages
Data integration and interoperability
Documenting in Latex
Teamwork
Specific Requirements
Candidates must comply with all applicable eligibility requirements and regulations of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Networks programme.
Doctoral Status: Applicants must not possess a doctoral degree at the date of recruitment.
Mobility Rule: Applicants must comply with the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) mobility rule. At the date of recruitment, candidates must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Italy for more than 12 months during the 36 months immediately preceding the recruitment date. Short stays such as holidays are not taken into account.
Employment conditions are subject to the legislation and internal regulations of the recruiting institution.
Languages ENGLISH Level Good
Additional Information Selection process
Once the application submission period has ended, the secretary of the selection committee may contact applicants to request any mandatory documentation that has not been provided, or to ask for additional documentation needed to evaluate the application. The Evaluation Committee will carry out an initial assessment of the eligible candidates’ CVs and, if deemed appropriate, will invite those who pass this stage to take part in tests and/or interviews. The date and location of the interviews and/or tests will be set by the committee and will be communicated in advance to the selected candidates via the email address provided in their application. . Candidates must be available to carry out the test and/or interview using an online platform.
Additional comments
Contract duration: 36 months. In the event that the successful candidate is recruited after 1 January 2027, the contract duration will be adjusted accordingly and will end no later than 31 December 2029.
Number of offers available 1 Company/Institute UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II Country Italy City Napoli Postal Code 80125 Geofield
#J-18808-Ljbffr
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