Closing the Water-Energy-Food-Loop: Building-Integrated Aquaponic Greenhouses for All, from Remote Communities to Metropolises
Funded PhD position in Building, Civil, and Environmental Engineering
Last updated: October 17, 2025, 3:25 p.m.
Supervisory details
Supervisor: Lucia Tirca
Department: Building, Civil, and Environmental Engineering, Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science
University: Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Start date: Winter 2026, Summer 2026, Fall 2026
PhD Fellowship: 35K CAD per year for 4 years
Project overview
This project integrates building-based greenhouses into urban and remote communities to decarbonize food production and support electrification. By reusing waste heat and CO₂ from buildings, these greenhouses enable local, year-round food production while reducing emissions and energy costs. The project addresses technical, policy, structural, and community engagement barriers through a multidisciplinary approach. In partnership with Indigenous organizations, municipalities, and industry, it promotes scalable, resilient solutions for sustainable food and energy systems across Canada.
Role description
- Conduct structural feasibility studies of urban rooftop buildings with a focus on seismic load performance, dynamic load effects, and gravity–earthquake interaction.
- Develop and refine steel structural systems for modular and urban rooftop greenhouses, ensuring compliance with seismic design codes (NBC, CSA) and resilience-based design principles.
- Apply 3D finite element modeling (ABAQUS, nonlinear analyses) to evaluate structural integrity, load distribution, and fracture behavior of greenhouse-integrated steel systems.
- Design and test ductile fuses, dissipation devices, and retrofitting solutions for existing rooftop buildings.
- Propose and validate seismic retrofit strategies to upgrade building groups for greenhouse integration while optimizing durability and resilience.
- Perform nonlinear static and dynamic analyses (fragility and safety margins) for rooftop and modular greenhouse structures under earthquake, wind, snow, and multi-hazard scenarios.
- Support risk assessment and mitigation by identifying failure modes, including structure–foundation interaction in Northern permafrost regions.
- Collaborate with partners to integrate resilience-based design with cost-benefit evaluations, providing structural recommendations aligned with safety, sustainability, and affordability.
- Structural engineering
- Design buildings to withstand seismic forces
- Design steel structures with different dissipation devices
- Seismic retrofit and rehabilitation of existing steel structures
- Resilience-based design modeling of steel structures
- Master’s degree in Structural Engineering, Civil Engineering, or a closely related field.
- Strong background in seismic design of steel structures, retrofitting, and resilience-based modeling.
- Proven experience with finite element software (e.g., ABAQUS, SAP2000, ETABS, ANSYS) for nonlinear static and dynamic analysis.
- Knowledge of Canadian building codes and steel design standards (NBC, CSA) or equivalent international standards.
- Familiarity with multi-hazard structural analysis (earthquake, wind, snow, permafrost conditions).
- Experience or strong interest in structural retrofitting, rehabilitation, and post-disaster resilience assessment.
- Ability to conduct independent research while contributing to large interdisciplinary teams.
- Excellent written and oral communication skills for publishing results and collaborating across engineering, architectural, and environmental domains.
- Competitive funding package, including tuition coverage, research stipend, and support for professional development and conference travel.
- Opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research in seismic engineering, resilience-based design, and structural retrofitting of steel systems for innovative building-integrated greenhouses.
- Access to state-of-the-art computational tools (finite element modeling, nonlinear analysis) and experimental resources for structural testing and performance validation.
- Supervision and mentorship from Professor Lucia Tirca, a leading expert in structural resilience and seismic design with 30+ years of academic and applied research experience.
- Exposure to real-world applications, including structural retrofitting strategies for Canadian and international contexts (urban rooftops, Northern permafrost regions).
- Opportunities to publish in top-tier journals and international conferences in seismic engineering, steel design, and resilience-based structural systems.
Please combine the following documents into a single PDF file.
- Letter of intent strongly aligned with the project and the research domain of the professor
- Academic CV
- Transcripts
- Names and contact information of 3 referees
- Publications, if any
- Any other documents that might benefit your file
Please indicate if applying for more than one position in your cover letter and email. Applications must be in screen-readable PDF or Word formats.
If you are already in Canada, or if you’re a Canadian citizen or Permanent Resident, please highlight this in your communications.
Send your PDF file to volt-age.recruitment@concordia.ca with the subject as:
Structural resilience_Your Name
Deadline to apply
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Questions/contact
For all questions, please contact Alisa Makusheva at alisa.makusheva@concordia.ca.
