$1M / year
Annual base salary.
The intended starting base is US$1,000,000 a year for selected full-time founding-scientist appointments. Base pay would support rigorous research, including work that produces a null result.
Exceptional science.
A full life.
Help establish the experiments that could make electrostatic fog collection useful. We are inviting exceptional scientists to help shape weatherhill’s founding research team.
THE PROPOSED FOUNDING PACKAGE
Take the work seriously.
Take the work seriously.
Value the people doing it.
A small number of future appointments, with the resources and scope to pursue difficult questions well.
$10M+
An eight-figure award.
Our ambition is an additional eight-figure award for exceptional work that makes a documented material contribution to independently validated results and defined, realized outcomes. The amount and terms would be set in a separate written plan.
How an award would be determined ↓Current stage: expressions of interest. These are proposed compensation and benefit targets. A funded role, employing entity, work location and written terms must be confirmed before an offer can be made. This invitation does not establish a funded award pool, guarantee a bonus or advertise an immediate start date.
THE CULTURE WE INTEND TO BUILD
Your family is more important than work.
The people who depend on you should not have to compete with your career. We want scientists to be present for their children, their partners, their parents and the lives they choose.
That principle has to show up in schedules, leave and everyday decisions. It means arranging laboratory coverage, planning travel carefully and giving someone room to handle a family emergency.
Scientific work sometimes needs a scheduled campaign or an instrument watched outside ordinary hours. Those demands should be agreed, shared and followed by recovery time. Constant availability is not our measure of commitment.
The same respect applies whether or not you have children. Rest, health, friendships and personal responsibilities are part of a full life.
SIX RESEARCH FOCUS AREAS
Bring a capability
Bring a capability
the experiment needs.
These are areas for future founding appointments, not a list of funded vacancies. A strong scientist may contribute across several.
01
Understand the fog before changing it.
Develop reproducible fog populations and connect composition, humidity, temperature and wet particle size to their optical behavior. Account for the small hydrated particles that a mass measurement can miss.
First useful outcome: A characterized test atmosphere, with a defensible size range and a documented boundary between the experiment and natural fog.
Explore the research →02
Put electric forces to a useful test.
Study charge delivery, droplet motion and collector geometry. Compare electrode and collector concepts, including approaches without corona discharge where the physics supports them, with qualified electrical design and emissions measurement.
First useful outcome: A measured link between the electrical operating conditions, droplet response and what reaches the collecting surface.
Explore the research →03
Make the visibility result trustworthy.
Build the optical measurement and uncertainty budget. Resolve alignment, wet optics, forward scattering, sampling volume and instrument response before a treatment effect is interpreted.
First useful outcome: A qualified direct optical measurement that can distinguish a useful change from drift, contamination and measurement bias.
Explore the research →04
Follow the air as carefully as the water.
Connect flow uniformity, residence time, droplet trajectories and deposition to the apparatus. Test models against measurements, and make pressure loss, bypass and the limits of scale-up explicit.
First useful outcome: A validated flow description and a practical account of throughput, collection and energy under the tested conditions.
Explore the research →05
Design a result that can survive scrutiny.
Set independent experimental units, allocation, controls and decision rules. Separate statistical uncertainty from systematic bias, and build an analysis that another researcher can reproduce.
First useful outcome: A preregistered comparison, an auditable analysis pipeline and a clear decision when the result is positive, null or adverse.
Explore the research →06
Build the instrument people can rely on.
Integrate sensors, acquisition, controls and data quality checks. Connect laboratory performance to maintainability, reliability, electrical consumption and the conditions a future site would require.
First useful outcome: An instrument with traceable data, documented operating limits and a credible next experiment or product decision.
Explore the research →THE FIRST WORK
Make FogLab a sound experiment.
FogLab is at protocol design. A facility has not been selected and weatherhill experiments have not yet been run.
Establish the measurement.
Refine the hypothesis, assess the facility and qualify the instruments, test atmosphere and uncertainty budget. Resolve the limitations that would prevent an interpretable result.
Test power on against power off.
Compare a powered collector with the identical passive collector. Measure optical change directly, alongside droplet size, airflow, charge and whole-system energy.
Replicate and set the next step.
Repeat the qualified comparison under the agreed design. Publish the result with its limits, then decide whether to develop the apparatus, change the hypothesis or stop that approach.
FAMILY, HEALTH & LONG-TERM SECURITY
A benefits plan
A benefits plan
built around a life.
Our proposed U.S. founding-scientist package. The policies below are targets to establish before hiring; plan availability, eligibility and local equivalents must be confirmed in the final offer.
Health & family coverage
Planned medical, dental and vision benefits for employees, with eligible dependent coverage. The goal is useful access to care and clear out-of-pocket costs. Carrier, employer contribution, networks and coverage terms will be documented before an employment offer is accepted.
401(k) & retirement
A planned U.S. 401(k) with employer contributions, subject to the adopted plan and applicable contribution and compensation limits. Eligibility, contribution formula, vesting and fees will be written out. A percentage of the entire proposed salary is not being promised.
Paid maternity & paternity leave
Proposed target: 24 weeks of paid bonding leave for each eligible parent, including birth, adoption and foster placement. Bonding leave would be offered on equal terms. Pregnancy and childbirth medical recovery would be addressed separately, with a supported transition back to work.
Time you can actually take
Proposed target: 30 working days of paid vacation each year, plus public holidays and separately defined sick, parental and caregiver leave. Teams would plan coverage so a holiday remains a holiday. Taking agreed leave should not mean quietly working from somewhere else.
Caregiving & family emergencies
Planned flexibility for childcare, eldercare and the unexpected. We intend to include caregiver leave and support for eligible backup care, with clear limits and a simple request process. Managers would adjust plans when a family needs someone at home.
Mental health & recovery
Planned mental-health support, disability and life-insurance options, and protected time for treatment and recovery. Benefits and eligibility will be defined through the selected plans. Confidential medical information belongs with the appropriate provider, not a research selection panel.
Gym membership & wellbeing
A planned gym membership or equivalent wellbeing allowance, with accessible choices for different needs. Movement, rest and a life outside the laboratory should fit into the week. Participation in a fitness activity would be optional.
A workable research schedule
Protected time for deep work, limited recurring meetings and flexibility for analysis, writing and modeling where the role allows. Laboratory campaigns would have agreed schedules, coverage and recovery time. Location, travel and on-site requirements would be settled before someone commits.
Support for doing the work
Role-appropriate equipment, software, technical support and approved professional development belong in the research budget. Conference participation, relocation needs and access to specialist facilities would be scoped with the appointment, so the work and the support are agreed together.
Final benefits would be described in the employment offer and applicable plan documents, including costs, limits, eligibility and any location-specific terms. The targets above do not replace those documents.
OUR TOP 1% STANDARD
Exceptional work.
Exceptional work.
Evidence you can show.
“Top 1%” describes the level of scientific contribution we aspire to recruit. It is not a claimed global ranking, a citation cutoff or a university prestige test.
Original work
You have changed how an important problem is understood, measured or built. You can explain what was yours, why it mattered and which limitations remain.
Evidence that travels
Your conclusions can be inspected and tested by someone else. Calibration records, code, methods, carefully documented prototypes and reproducible results all count.
Judgment under uncertainty
You choose decisive experiments, notice a confound early and change direction when the evidence changes. You know when an elegant model has outrun its measurement.
Generosity in a team
You make colleagues better, share credit accurately and welcome difficult technical questions. Strong disagreement can coexist with respect and a shared experimental record.
A doctorate may be relevant to a particular appointment. Equivalent depth demonstrated through substantial research or engineering work also deserves a careful reading. Public papers are one route; methods, instruments, open software and well-documented technical results can be others.
Career breaks, caregiving and nontraditional paths do not erase a contribution. Selection would focus on evidence relevant to the work, scientific judgment and the ability to collaborate.
HOW CONTRIBUTION WOULD BE RECOGNIZED
A substantial award
A substantial award
needs clear terms.
The potential eight-figure award is separate from annual base salary. It is an ambition for exceptional contribution, not an automatic annual bonus.
We want the people who create meaningful value to share in it. That starts with documenting contribution and agreeing what a result must establish. A signed award plan would need to define all of the following before it could create an entitlement.
Scientific validation
The work must survive independent review and, where appropriate, replication under defined conditions. Its methods, uncertainty, null findings and adverse effects belong in the record. A promising demonstration alone would not settle the award.
Material contribution
The plan would identify how theory, apparatus, software, measurements, analysis and team leadership are attributed. Shared work requires shared credit. The contribution record would be reviewed before any allocation is made.
Realized outcomes
The agreement would name measurable outcomes and any financial trigger, such as qualifying revenue actually received. It would specify how those outcomes connect to the scientist’s work. Publicity, a headline valuation or an unverified forecast would not by themselves establish payment.
Amount, form and timing
The agreement would state the amount or formula, allocation limits, whether an award is cash, equity or a mix, funding conditions, approval authority, vesting and payment dates. It would also define treatment of leave, role changes and departure, and the process for resolving a disputed attribution.
A contribution can matter because it rules out a costly mistake. Scientific integrity must never depend on producing a preferred answer. Any additional award would still require the particular validation, contribution and realized-outcome conditions in the signed plan.
A SERIOUS, RESPECTFUL FIRST CONVERSATION
Start with your work.
An expression of interest helps us assess mutual fit. It is not a request to leave your current role or begin unpaid research.
Introduce a contribution.
Share a short background, one to three public links and a clear account of your own contribution. Choose the research focus that fits you best and explain which FogLab question you would examine first.
Review the evidence together.
If there is a suitable opportunity to explore, discuss your methods, assumptions and what changed because of your work. We would agree the participants and technical scope of that conversation in advance.
Scope the appointment.
Discuss resources, collaborators, laboratory access, location, travel and ways of working. References would be contacted only with your permission. Any substantial new research exercise would require a separately agreed paid scope.
Confirm the terms before a decision.
An offer would follow only once the role and funding are approved. It would identify the employer, salary, benefits, start date and employment terms. Any contribution-award plan would be provided separately for review.
What to send
A concise account of relevant work, public sources and the research problem you can help resolve. You can describe employment constraints and your broad availability without sharing private details about your family or health.
Use material you have the right to share. Do not submit confidential employer research, unpublished third-party data, patient information or restricted technical material. There is no application fee.
An accessible process
We welcome relevant work from different backgrounds and career paths. Selection would be based on the responsibilities of the appointment and would not exclude people because of protected personal characteristics.
If you need an adjustment to the application or discussion format, describe the adjustment through the inquiry route. You do not need to submit a diagnosis or medical record. Employment location, work authorization and any relocation support would be addressed for a specific approved role.
FOUNDING-SCIENTIST EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
Bring the result
Bring the result
you are proud to explain.
Show us what you have contributed, what you have learned and what you would want to investigate next.