Missions

In the frame of the collaborative project between the French Office for Biodiversity and the LECA, we are looking for a highly motivated postdoc to work on biodiversity and ecosystem service modelling and scenarios. We seek a candidate with strong interests in statistical ecology, artificial intelligence and biodiversity scenarios.

Activités

We are especially looking for someone interested in developing/testing/applying sets of statistical models including machine and deep-learning approaches to ecological data like distribution data on species functions and ecosystem services at large spatial scales (e.g., Europe). Candidates should have strong experience in big data, handling large models and HPCs. Different sources of data (GBIF, INat, TRY, GLOBI) will be jointly used, through the various developments we have been developing the last few years (ensemble modelling, trophic species distribution modelling, AI tools). Applications will also involve future climate and land use scenarios, with the IPBES Nature Future Framework. Systematic conservation planning tools would then be used to find irreplaceable and complementary areas to protect and to foster the connectivity between protected areas. The candidate will have to interact with the other partners of the projects but also with stakeholders to define biodiversity indicators and metrics of interest for them.

Compétences

- A PhD in ecology/biodiversity/geography and/or mathematics/statistics/AI applied to ecological questions.
- A good track-record of publications.
- Proficient in R and Python
- A good experience in analyzing large scale biodiversity data and using statistical models
- Writing and communication skills
- Flexibility and adaptability
- Rigor and autonomy

Contexte de travail

LECA (https://leca.osug.fr) is part of the Univ. Grenoble Alpes and CNRS in France. Grenoble is set close to some of the most beautiful mountains of the Alps with excellent connections to Lyon and Geneva.
LECA host a large and vibrant community of excellent scientists to interact with, several highly cited researchers, a large variety of experimental and observational cases studies (mostly in the Alps such as ORCHAMP), and several modelling tools already developed (biomod2, FATE-HD, econetwork, metanetwork, VirtualCom, EcoLottery). Working language is English and French.

The selected candidate will join the BIOM team "Describing, understanding and predicting the spatio-temporal distribution and dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystems (BIOdiversity Monitoring), whose research objectives are to study how global changes influence biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and nature's contributions to societies. The team provides an excellent intellectual environment and infrastructure for the research project, with several postdocs and PhD students working on complementary themes.