Research Internship: Spatial Drivers of Atmospheric NH3 in North-West Europe

About the role

This is a 6-month research internship (M2 level) at IMT Nord Europe, within the Centre of Education, Research and Innovation on Energy and Environment (CERI EE) in Douai, France. It sits in the research axis "Observations, Sources and Processes in the Atmosphere" and is embedded in the RESILIENCE project, which uses atmospheric observations from the ATOLL platform to study urban environmental quality. The internship aims to build a machine-learning framework to understand what drives the spatial distribution of ammonia (NH3) concentrations in north-west Europe, combining ground-level and satellite data.

Key responsibilities

• Literature review of statistical modelling and machine-learning methods (e.g. random forests, gradient boosting) for analysing NH3 spatial drivers.
• Exploratory data analysis of available datasets (ground-level NH3 measurements, satellite data, meteorology, land use, agricultural emissions) and study of variable correlations.
• Develop and implement the modelling framework, select features and optimise machine-learning models to predict or explain NH3 distribution.
• Map results (e.g. heatmaps of NH3 concentration, feature importance by area) and discuss policy implications.

Required profile

• Master 2 student in atmospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry or environmental sciences with an interest in data science.
• Fluent English, spoken and written, as the internship is carried out in collaboration with a colleague at Georgia Tech via online meetings only.