Postdoctoral Fellow in Water Sensing

Position Title: Postdoctoral Fellow in Water Sensing

Department / Academic Unit: School of Environmental Sciences

Description of the Area/Topic of Research:

The microSCAPE Lab at the University of Guelph is recruiting a Postdoctoral Fellow with expertise in water sensing. The specific sensing domain is open: we have worked with IoT sensor networks, spectrophotometric systems, hyperspectral imaging, low-cost electrochemical sensors, and passive sampling devices. What matters is that you have deep expertise in water sensing and a genuine interest in seeing that expertise applied.

Description of Position:

This is a well-funded, high-impact position within one of Canada's largest and most internationally connected water research programs, supported by the $8M Canada Excellence Research Chair in Waterborne Pathogens at the University of Guelph and a further $13M AUD through the Australian Research Council Industrial Transformation Research Hub for IoT in Water at Queensland University of Technology. You will join a team whose sensing technologies have been deployed in more than 23 countries, incorporated into WHO and World Bank guidelines, and credited by public health agencies with saving lives.

You will be supervised by Prof. David McCarthy, named Monash Postgraduate Supervisor of the Year and author of more than 229 peer-reviewed publications, with a field-weighted citation impact 45% above the global average. You will work in a newly fitted sensing laboratory and CL2+ biosafety facility at the University of Guelph, within a team of more than 15 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and research staff. Through the NSERC CREATE-eSENSORs program and the ARC IoT Hub, you will have access to an international network of sensing researchers and industry partners and the opportunity for an overseas research exchange. We are committed to open-source and open-hardware principles, which means your work gets used.

We work across the full stack of water monitoring: urban stormwater and sewer networks, agricultural drainage, recreational water quality, and wastewater surveillance. We build sensors and deploy them. We partner with cities, conservation authorities, and provincial and federal agencies, and we expect our work to change how water systems are managed in practice. If you want a postdoc where the output is a paper that sits in a journal, this is not the right position. If you want a postdoc where the output changes how a city
monitors its drainage network or how a farmer manages their water, read on. General Outline of Duties: What you will do: You will lead your own sensing-focused research within the group's program, with genuine freedom to develop new directions. You will contribute to active field deployments with our municipal and government partners, mentor graduate students, and engage directly with the practitioners who use the outputs of our work.

Required Qualifications:

What we are looking for:

• A PhD in a relevant discipline, with a strong first-author publication record from your doctoral/masters research and/or previous postdoctoral positions.
• Demonstrated experience engaging with industry or government partners is essential: we are looking for someone who knows how to work at the interface between research and practice and who is motivated by that.
• Experience with any of the following is an advantage: IoT systems, low-cost sensor design and fabrication, open-source hardware, machine learning for water quality prediction, or field-based monitoring programs. The ideal candidate will combine strong technical expertise with leadership skills that allow them to guide small research teams toward significant, high-impact outcomes.

Start Date & Duration of Appointment: The position is offered initially for one year and is extendable to three years as a Postdoctoral Fellow

Anticipated Hours/Days of Work (at time of posting): M-F; 9am-5pm

Salary Range (Minimum): 60,000

Salary Range (Maximum): 120,000

Salary Information: Salary starts at $60,000 per annum and scales with years of experience, performance and success in grant applications, with a range of $60,000 to $120,000 per annum for exceptional candidates. The position is offered initially for one year and is extendable to three years as a Postdoctoral Fellow, and beyond that as a Research Associate for candidates who wish to build a longer-term career within the group. This is not an unusual path in McCarthy’s labs: many of his postdoctoral fellows and research associates stay with the team for more than 10 years, reflecting the depth of the research program and the career development opportunities it provides.

We are building a critical mass of expertise at the University of Guelph, with multiple recent early-career faculty hires including Binyam Desta (waterborne disease epidemiology), Shadman Khan (next-generation pathogen sensing technologies) and Wenxi Liao (nature-based and engineered systems for improved water treatment and pathogen removal); it is an exciting and advantageous time for a post-doctoral fellow to join the microSCAPE team as we realize our ambitions of being a world-leading interdisciplinary research program.

Application Requirements

Documents:

• CV
• Publications

Other: Send your CV and two papers you are proud of, each accompanied by a short statement describing your contribution to the work, examples of how you impacted the research questions or design, and why it represents your best. There is no cover letter.

Special Instructions: Applications that do not include both papers and statements will not be considered. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Supervisor: David McCarthy

Contact Info

Name: Dr. David McCarthy

Email: david.mccarthy@uoguelph.ca

Posting Date: Wed, 09/30/2026
Closing Date: Thu, 09/30/2027