Harvard has NMR postdoc openings

Harvard is not advertising one vague “NMR postdoc.” It has at least two distinct postdoctoral tracks open or recently listed in this area, and they point to two very different bets inside the university’s engineering and applied-physics ecosystem. One sits with Yi-Qiao Song in David Weitz’s lab and focuses on nuclear magnetic resonance technology for subsurface exploration and carbon storage. The other sits in Donhee Ham’s group and is framed around semiconductor-driven NMR and quantum engineering. ### What’s actually open? The clearest current listing is a Postdoctoral Fellow position in Applied Physics at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The role is tied to Dr. Yi-Qiao Song in Prof. David Weitz’s lab, and Harvard says the work centers on NMR technology development and applications in subsurface exploration and carbon storage. The appointment starts as a one-year term, renewable based on performance and funding, with a listed salary range of $67,600 to $91,826. (higheredjobs.com) ### What kind of person are they trying to hire? This is not a pure theory slot. Harvard says it wants someone with a doctorate in physics, chemistry, geoscience, or a related field, and it specifically calls out RF and microwave electronics, NMR, geological science, and rock-core analysis as desirable experience. That combination tells you the job sits at the boundary between instrument building and real-world materials problems — basically, someone who can make hardware work and also use it on messy physical samples. (higheredjobs.com) ### Why carbon storage? Because NMR is useful when you want to understand what fluids are doing inside porous materials. In carbon storage, that means questions like where injected CO2 goes, how it moves through rock, and what pore structures might trap or leak it. Harvard’s wording is short, but “subsurface exploration and carbon storage” is a strong clue that this is not bench chemistry for its own sake — it is measurement science aimed at energy and geoscience problems with policy and industrial relevance. (higheredjobs.com) ### What’s the second opening? A separate Harvard listing describes “a number of postdoctoral positions” in Donhee Ham’s group for semiconductor-driven NMR and quantum engineering. The posting says one project is about building small semiconductor systems for NMR, while the broader framing ties the work to quantum engineering. That is a different flavor of NMR entirely — less geoscience application, more device architecture, sensing, and next-generation measurement platforms. (higheredjobs.com) ### So is this one hiring wave or two? Turns out it’s at least two lanes under the same Harvard umbrella, not one unified instrumentation group posting. Song’s role is explicitly in applied physics with geoscience-facing NMR development. Ham’s role is in EE/applied physics with semiconductor and quantum-engineering language. The common thread is that both jobs treat NMR as a technology platform to be advanced, not just a mature tool to be operated. (main.hercjobs.org) ### What about ESR, NQR, SEM, CT, and XRD? That broader bundle is plausible as a description of adjacent Harvard capabilities, but it is not what the clearest job ads themselves say. The Song listing names NMR, RF/microwave electronics, geology, and rock-core analysis. The Ham listing names semiconductor-driven NMR and quantum engineering. Harvard chemistry also has a large instrumentation base — including NMR, EPR, and X-ray facilities — but that is separate from saying a specific postdoc ad currently bundles all those methods together. (higheredjobs.com) ### Why does that distinction matter? Because “Harvard has NMR postdoc openings” is true, but the interesting part is where the openings sit. These are not generic service-core roles. They live in research groups that are pushing measurement systems into applied domains — carbon storage on one side, semiconductor and quantum hardware on the other. That makes the hiring signal stronger than a routine postdoc ad. (higheredjobs.com) ### Bottom line? The real story is narrower and more concrete than the social post made it sound. Harvard appears to have at least two active NMR-centered postdoc opportunities, and both point to serious investment in instrumentation-heavy research — one aimed at subsurface and carbon-storage problems, the other at semiconductor-driven NMR and quantum engineering. (higheredjobs.com)