Internship offer: Source apportionment and exposure assessment of urban aerosols

Context:

IMT Nord Europe is a public higher-education and research institution belonging to the Institut Mines-Télécom (IMT) group, under the supervision of the French Ministry of Industry. Its missions include engineering education, scientific research, and innovation in support of sustainable territorial development.

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This internship will be carried out within the CERI EE at IMT Nord Europe, in the research axis "Observations, Sources and Processes in the Atmosphere" (OSPA). The host team develops advanced experimental and data-analysis approaches to characterize atmospheric aerosols, their sources, and their impacts on air quality and health.

The work is embedded in the framework of the RESILIENCE project, a national transdisciplinary research initiative addressing urban environmental quality and exposure issues, relying on advanced atmospheric observations performed at the ATOLL (ATmospheric Observations in liLLe) platform, part of the European ACTRIS research infrastructure.

Brief role description:

Urban air pollution remains a major environmental and public-health challenge. Beyond particle mass concentrations, recent research highlights the importance of chemical composition, emission sources and particle size distributions in determining exposure and health relevance.

This internship focuses on the analysis of high-time-resolution atmospheric aerosol datasets, including chemical speciation, black carbon, trace metals and particle size distributions. The intern will contribute to ongoing research activities related to the characterization of urban aerosol sources and their temporal variability.

The position is intended for students seeking research-oriented training in atmospheric sciences and environmental data analysis.

Main tasks

Under the supervision of the research team, the intern will:

• Conduct a literature review on aerosol chemical composition, source apportionment and exposure-related indicators
• Participate in data pre-processing and quality control (QA/QC) of real-time atmospheric measurements
• Perform exploratory data analysis of aerosol chemical and physical properties
• Apply or test multivariate statistical tools (e.g. receptor models)
• Assist in the preparation of figures, internal reports and scientific material

The candidate should be currently enrolled in a Master's programme (M2) or in a final-year engineering programme, in one of the following fields: Atmospheric sciences; Environmental sciences or environmental engineering; Physics, chemistry or applied data science; etc.

Skills :

• Ability to work with datasets and apply quantitative methods
• Interest in environmental data analysis and atmospheric research
• Good level of English, written and oral
• Motivation, autonomy and ability to work in a research environment

Knowledge :

• Basic understanding of air quality, aerosols or environmental sciences
• Basic to intermediate knowledge of scientific programming (R, Python, Matlab or equivalent)
• Familiarity with quantitative data analysis concepts

CONDITIONS:

This is a full-time research internship with a duration of 6 months. The internship will take place at IMT Nord Europe, with activities conducted between the Bourseul campus (Douai) and ATOLL (Lille). The position is compensated according to French regulations for internships. The start date is flexible and to be agreed with the selected candidate. The working language is English; knowledge of French is not required.

INFORMATION AND APPLICATION:

For any information on the duties, please contact Dr. Hui CHEN ), Prof. Verónique RIFFAULT (veronique.-nord-europe) and Dr. Laurent ALLEMAN (Laurent.-nord-)

For any administrative information, please contact the Human Resources Department: -nord- -nord-

Applicants should submit :

• CV
• Short motivation letter

Shortlisted candidates may be invited to an interview (video) and asked to briefly present their academic background and research interests.

DEADLINE DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS: February 28th, 2026. The position is open until filled. We will begin reviewing applications as they are received.