Position Description – Research Associate “Transformative Steps in Plant Data Synthesis: Quantifying and Scaling
Global Plant Trait Diversity” * * *Availability*: Applications should be made by mid-May, 2011 and we will hire as soon as an appropriate candidate has been found. The position is for two years. *Requirements*: PhD in natural science or applied statistics/mathematics with interest in ecological research. *Expertise and experience*: We are seeking for applicants with excellent numerical skills (e.g., handling large datasets, multivariate data analyses, data mining). The Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, USA, and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, jointly offer a Post-Doc fellowship on analysing and predicting global pattern of vegetation attributes. [This will result in two, one-year appointments, i.e. the postdoc will be hired by each institute for one year.] The two Institutes are heading an international consortium of plant ecologists, which has developed a global database of plant traits (the TRYdata base; try-db.org) to support the quantification and scaling of global plant diversity. The Post-Doc position will contribute to the development and application of advanced statistical methods to fill gaps in the data matrix of the TRY database. The filled matrix will be used in combination with environmental information, like remote sensing, eddy covariance data and global species occurrence databases, to predict pattern of key vegetation attributes such as canopy nitrogen content and photosynthetic capacity on global scale. The approaches are highly innovative and will involve the application of numerical methods for gap-filling and spatial interpolation, which have recently been developed at the University of Minnesota, School of Statistics. The successful applicant will work closely with Peter Reich, with computer science/statistics experts (A. Banerjee, S. Chatterjee and/or S. Shekhar) of the University of Minnesota, with Markus Reichstein and Jens Kattge of the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, and potential with others as appropriate. The project will be a close cooperation with scientists at both institutes, regardless of where the successful candidate is housed at any time during the project. The position will be divided approximately equally between the two institutions. For further information, please contact pre...@umn.edu, jkat...@bgc-jena.mpg.de, mreichst...@bgc-jena.mpg.de *Application Instructions**: *Applications and required documents must be submitted online at the University of Minnesota Employment website: https://employment.umn.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/position/JobDetails_css.jsp?postingId=472868 * *Upload the following documents:** 1. Your CV 2. Your most important publication or manuscript 3. The most important publication or manuscript on which you are the lead author, if different from #2, and 4. Your publication or manuscript most closely related to plant trait relationships, data mining, or biostatistics. Please include in your CV, the phone numbers and email addresses of three references. Please do not send reference letters. We will contact referees. *The University of Minnesota And The** Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry **are equal opportunity employers. The position is open to all nationalities.*
