Research Fellow in Tropical American Forest Dynamics

This role will be based on the university campus, with scope to be undertaken in a hybrid manner. We are open to discussing flexible working arrangements.

Are you an ambitious researcher looking for your next challenge? Do you have strong quantitative skills and interests in forests, trees or climate change? Do you want to join a global, dynamic team and further your career in a leading UK University?

You will work on a UK Natural Environment Research Council funded project: “AMSINK – The End of the Amazon Carbon Sink?”. You will have responsibility for undertaking statistical analyses of forest dynamics (turnover, productivity, and change metrics) across time and space and producing high-quality written outputs.

Our research group conducts world-leading research in tropical ecology and change. Your research will be undertaken with a team from across the tropics including partners in RAINFOR, PPBio and other networks of tropical American researchers. AMSINK supports long-term ecological monitoring and research with colleagues in South America, the U.K. and worldwide, assisted by the ForestPlots.net data management team at Leeds. Our research goal is to assess the response of South American tropical forests to changing climates. We are looking for a motivated researcher who can help discover how, where and why the dynamics of American tropical forests respond.

You will have a PhD in Ecology, Environmental Science, Statistics or related discipline, including advanced experience applying statistics to ecological problems. You will have a publication record, excellent analytical skills and have successfully worked with a research team. Applicants must have strong statistical modelling skills using R. You will have experience of a range of relevant techniques, potentially including mixed effects models, Bayesian and maximum likelihood approaches, spatial statistics and random forests or other machine-learning approaches and quickly learn new techniques. You enjoy analysing large ecological datasets and are interested in large-scale comparisons with observational or experimental datasets over space, time and environmental gradients. Field experience of tropical forest ecology is desirable but not essential. The ability to communicate well in the main Latin American languages will be an advantage. The successful candidate will contribute in other ways including helping early career researchers in South America with their project-related analyses.

The project is coordinated by Professor Oliver Phillips, responsible for implementation and for overseeing the forest data analyses. Others involved include Tim Baker, David Galbraith, Manuel Gloor and Simon Lewis (Leeds), Flavia Costa (INPA, Brazil), Beatriz Marimon (UNEMAT, Brazil) and Martin Sullivan (Manchester Metropolitan University). This job is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council via University of Leeds.

This post may be suitable for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker or Global Talent visa routes. For information please visit: www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa and www.gov.uk/global-talent

We offer

• Generous pension scheme plus life assurance– the University contributes 14.5% of salary
• Health and Wellbeing: Discounted options at our state-of-the-art Campus gym, with pool, sauna, climbing wall, cycle circuit, and sports halls
• Professional Development courses
• On-site childcare and travel schemes
• 42 days holiday a year

And much more!

If you are looking for a role that allows you to apply your advanced statistical skills to questions of forest dynamics and change, apply today.

Full candidate brief [click here]

If you have queries contact: Professor Oliver Phillips o.phillips@leeds.ac.uk

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