Post-Doctoral Fellowship, ENTROPIE lab in New Caledonia funded by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Resilient Reef initiative
Post-Doctoral Fellowship at IRD’s ENTROPIE lab in Noumea, New Caledonia
funded by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Resilient Reef initiative
We are looking for a talented post-doctoral candidate to join our collaborative project Track Changes evaluating coastal marine ecosystem transformations in New Caledonia facing environmental changes. This is a country-scale, multi-actor collaborative project gathering representatives from the public, private, and civil sectors to assess coastal ecosystem health and dynamics, and identify major stressors and sustainable management pathways. The project is based on a compilation of available quantitative data on coastal ecosystem distribution and dynamics throughout New Caledonia.
The project is supported by funding from the French Ministries of Higher Education & Research (Laboratory of Excellence CORAIL) and Foreign Affairs (High Commissioner of the French Republic in New Caledonia). The post-doc fellowship is funded by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Resilient Reef initiative, coordinated in New Caledonia by the Neocaledonian Biodiversity Agency (former Conservatoire d’Espaces Naturels de Nouvelle-Calédonie).
The post-doc will join the ENTROPIE laboratory at the French National Institute of Research for Sustainable Development (IRD) based in Noumea, New Caledonia. They will work under the supervision of Dr. Mohsen Kayal, and in close interaction with the project’s core team, data contributors, and representatives of the major institutions involved in the survey and management of the coastal system. This includes managers, academics, private companies, environmental NGOs, and participative science associations.
Duties:
The post-doc will be in charge of quantifying long-term trajectories and drivers of different ecological communities (coral, seagrass, fish, macro-invertebrate, megafauna, etc.) based on available data, using multi-factorial non-linear statistical approaches. A high level of organization to handle complex sets of ecological data, and mastery of state-of-the-art statistical tools and coding in R are key for this position. The post-doc will also contribute to ongoing data compilations and project coordination activities, including taking part in the supervision of graduate students, preparing project products and deliverables, and organizing meetings with project partners, managers, and local representatives, for which proficiency in French is needed.
Required skills/experience:
- PhD in ecology/marine biology or equivalent
- mastery of statistical tools (coding in R), including non-linear additive regression models (GAM, BRT, etc.)
- demonstrated high level of scientific writing in English (high quality publication record)
- proficiency in French language
Optional competences:
- French professional diving certificate (CAH), or equivalent
- Python programming language
Applications will be accepted through the 24 February 2023, but interested applicants are encouraged to apply as soon as possible, as we are looking to quickly fill this position.
Selected candidates will be invited to an interview via Zoom.
The start of the Post-Doctoral fellowship is scheduled for the 3 April 2023, on site in Noumea.
Track Changes project: https://umr-entropie.ird.nc/index.php/home-en/home/research/portfolio/ongoing-projects/projet-track-changes
IRD’s ENTROPIE lab: https://umr-entropie.ird.nc
GBRF’s Resilient Reef initiative: https://barrierreef.org/what-we-do/projects/resilient-reefs