PRR Project

Summary

The Assistant Researcher main tasks are to develop and implement:automation and control systems for testing and calibration laboratories and field infrastructures;new methods for the assurance of measurement quality, including automation, data storage, validation, traceability and auditability of digital systems;human-to-machine interfaces for legacy equipment and facilities;methods to support maintenance and traceability of smart instrumentation;ethernet and Wi-Fi networks for remote measurements, providing system administration;industrial field networks and system administration;advanced consultancy related to measurement systems properties;assessment and integration of digital technologies in Metrology activities;assessment, integration and deployment of hardware and software, in legacy systems, networks and infrastructures.The Assistant Researcher shall be responsible for carrying out, on a regular basis, apart from the research and development activities, other scientific and technical activities integrated in the competences of LNEC, such as:Supervising higher education students’ theses, graduation, post-graduation, Master’s, and Doctoral theses;Disseminating and publishing non-confidential results;Participating in the design and development of research projects and in other scientific and technical activities;Directing the work within the scope of the projects assigned;Collaborating in the development of training and capacity-building for R&DI activities;The position requires a background in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Automation and Control Systems, and valuable experience in Metrology and Quality Management Systems.Electrical and Computer Engineering with experience in Automation and Control Systems;Doctoral degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Electrical and Automation Engineering and Power Systems or related field;quality management systems applied in the framework of the accreditation of testing and calibration laboratories;industrial automation and PLC, and Ladder logic programming language;industrial fieldbus protocols, Modbus, ModbusPlus;digital communication and interfaces, RS232, RS485 and TCP/IP;ethernet and Wi-Fi network implementation and system administration;human-machine interfaces and SCADA systems development, with LabVIEW, MATLAB and Visual Basic;data processing, analysis and visualization, with MATLAB, LabVIEW, Octave and RStudio;software development in JAVA, C, C++ and Python;electronic design and simulation, with KiCAD, LTspice, PSpice;Linux and Windows OS administration and Bash, Batch shell script knowledge;scientific instrumentation troubleshooting and assessment; RationaleThe Metrological Quality Division of the Scientific Instrumentation Centre (NQM/CIC) carries out R&DI of Applied Metrology for Civil Engineering. It provides the support for traceability of measurements in LNEC, and the main metrological activities related with instrumentation, methods, uncertainty evaluation, and other requirements of the Quality Management System implemented in LNEC based on the ISO/IEC 17025 standard.LNEC-EM is an infrastructure that includes 32 laboratory units, which more than 300 testing and calibration methods accredited by the Portuguese Institute for Accreditation (IPAC). It also includes the Hydraulic Metrology Unit that support the recognition, by EURAMET and BIPM, of LNEC as Designated Institute for the quantities flow rate and flow speed of liquids.Today LNEC’s laboratory infrastructure faces the need for modernization, pursuing the aim of developing a system based on a digital transition. Therefore, the laboratory infrastructure and legacy systems are undertaking an intense transformation that requires a new vision to measurement.Although the digital transition applied to testing and calibration activities have brought major opportunities – for implementing process automation in the laboratories process, towards a more efficiency and sustainable practices (contributing to the SDG the goal 13) – new challenges arise with system complexity and data obfuscation, that can compromise system resilience, traceability, and auditability of the overall system.Metrology Institutes and Laboratories currently stand strong efforts to implement the digital transition by introducing new concepts such as a protocol for Digital Calibration Certificates, enabling the universal exchange of measurement data without human intervention (contributing to the SDG goal 9).This position aims to contribute to the fulfilment of the digital transition challenges in LNEC, namely, upgrading the quality of measurements with smart instrumentation, developing automated methods, to support a strategy to bring to a harmonized digital framework the manual and labour-intensive laboratory procedures, and to implement autonomous Machine-to-Machine methods for measurements, data acquisition systems and calibration processes.