Postdoc Researcher in Control & Optimisation for Maritime Hybrid Energy Systems

Develop optimisation-based energy management and control for maritime batteries and fuel cells to improve efficiency, safety and lifetime within the NWO SEANERGETIC project.

Job description

Are you motivated to develop advanced control and optimisation methods that accelerate the transition toward zero-emission shipping?

We are looking for a highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Maritime & Transport Technology (MTT) department at TU Delft within the NWO KIC project SEANERGETIC (Ship system expanded energy storage devices lifetime via AI-empowered control).

SEANERGETIC aims to make electrochemical energy storage systems (batteries and fuel cells) economically and environmentally viable for maritime applications by leveraging operational data and hybrid modelling approaches. The project focuses on extending lifetime, improving efficiency, ensuring safety, and enabling circular use of energy storage technologies.

This position contributes to Work Package 3: Energy, Health and Safety Management and Sizing Optimization. You will work within the Sustainable Drive and Energy Systems group at TU Delft, in close collaboration with industrial partners and data owners in the SEANERGETIC consortium.

Your main tasks will include:

• Developing optimisation-based energy management strategies for hybrid and full-electric vessels, with explicit constraints on safety, efficiency and component limits.
• Designing and evaluating predictive control approaches (e.g., MPC/stochastic MPC) for real-time power split between batteries, fuel cells, and auxiliaries.
• Integrating battery and fuel cell health indicators (SoC/SoH, thermal constraints, degradation proxies) into control and decision-making.
• Formulating and solving multi-objective optimisation problems (e.g., efficiency vs lifetime vs availability), including Pareto analysis and sensitivity studies.
• Contributing to sizing optimisation of batteries and fuel cells using operational profiles and lifecycle objectives, linking design choices to operational control policies.
• Validating methods on real-world datasets and, where applicable, demonstrator environments with consortium partners.
• Publishing results in high-impact journals and conferences, and contributing to project deliverables.

The position offers a unique opportunity to work at the interface of control engineering, optimisation, and maritime energy systems, with direct impact on reduced CAPEX/OPEX and extended lifetime of energy storage devices.

Job requirements

We are looking for an outstanding and enthusiastic postdoctoral candidate with a strong background in control engineering, optimisation, and energy management for electrochemical energy systems.

The ideal candidate should hold a PhD (or is close to completion) in control engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, maritime engineering, applied mathematics, or a related field.

Moreover, the candidate should demonstrate experience with at least one of the following:

• Model Predictive Control (MPC) / stochastic MPC / constrained control
• Optimal control and mathematical optimisation (convex optimisation, nonlinear programming, dynamic programming)
• Energy Management Systems (EMS) for hybrid powertrains and/or microgrids
• Battery and/or fuel cell modelling, including operational constraints and degradation-aware control

The ideal candidate has strong programming skills in Python and/or MATLAB and is comfortable working with real operational datasets.

The candidate must be able to work independently while collaborating effectively within a multidisciplinary consortium of academic and industrial partners and communicates clearly and professionally in English.

Experience with maritime hybrid energy systems is considered a strong plus, but it is not a strict requirement.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)

We are looking for a highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Maritime & Transport Technology (MTT) department at TU Delft within the NWO KIC project SEANERGETIC (Ship system expanded energy storage devices lifetime via AI-empowered control).