Postdoctoral Research Associate

Full Time: 35 hours per week

Fixed Term: 30 months

We are looking for a Post-Doctoral Research Associate to map the early radiation of land plants using a combination of 3D imaging approaches, surveys of fossil datasets and through a collaboration with deep time ecological modellers. The position is based in the group of Dr Sandy Hetherington (The Molecular Palaeobotany and Evolution Group) in the Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences. 

The Opportunity:

The fossil record provides a biased and fragmentary view of early land plant evolution. This severely limits our ability to make predictions about the radiation of major groups and the impact that plants had on the Earth System. One approach to overcome the limitation of the fossil record is to use deep time ecological modelling to help simulate the early radiation of land plants. We aim to do this here in project “MapRad: Mapping the radiation of land plants to establish their impact on the Earth System”, a collaboration between the lab of Dr Sandy Hetherington at the University of Edinburgh and Professor Benjamin Mills and Dr Khushboo Gurung at the University of Leeds. We are looking for an enthusiastic Post-Doctoral Research Associate to join the Edinburgh based team of Sandy Hetherington to lead efforts to quantitively characterise key morphological characteristics of fossil plants and assemble data on their ecology and global distribution. This fossil evidence will provide new data on the biology and physiology of early plants and will enable us to simulate their global distributions in the ecological model. 

Your skills and attributes for success: 

• PhD in an appropriate biological or geological science
• Experience of studying Devonian fossil plants
• Experience of using novel imaging approaches on fossils.

Advert information