Missions

The person hired for this position will work within the context of the international project ANERIS project https://aneris.eu/. The aim is to use technology to study biology at space and time scales similar to those of physics and chemistry (coined "operational marine biology"). Here, in particular, the person will exploit time series of zoo and phytoplankton, collected in the Mediterranean and Irish seas, at hourly resolution, with a UVP and a CytoSense. The goal is to describe processes that are typically missed with more traditional weekly to monthly sampling, understand their importance for ecosystem processes and compare their magnitude with longer term phenomena.

Activités

Main activities (in chronological order):
- Collect, curate and taxonomically classify (through artificial intelligence) the images collected by the two instruments.
- Determine a few target taxonomic groups based on their relative abundance and ecological importance.
- Refine the sorting of those groups.
- Analyse statistically the changes in the concentration, biovolume and morphological characteristics of the target groups, to capture and understand short term processes.
- Create a dashboard to follow the continued evolution of the target groups, as the data comes in.

Other activities : The post-doc is expected to contribute to the achievement of the ANERIS objectives at large, participate in the cross-fertilizing activities among the work-packages of the project, and attend project meetings to present his/her progress

Compétences

Transversal knowledge required :
- Knowledge in numerical ecology
- Knowledge in marine biology and/or oceanography; preferably with a focus on plankton
- Good writing skills and oral expression in english (at least B2)
- Scientific rigor and curiosity

Technical skills :
- Required: PhD in marine biology or oceanography, preferably on plankton
- Required: good programming skills, preferably in R or Python, and ability to deal with large datasets (millions of records)
- Required: experience in statistical analysis, ideally in machine learning techniques
- Required: publication of at least one research article in a scientific journal as first author
- Optional: previous experience in plankton time series

Peoples skills :
- Both autonomy and teamwork abilities
- Collaboration in an international context

Contexte de travail

The Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche (LOV ; http://lov.obs-vlfr.fr/) is located close to Nice, on the French Riviera. It belongs to one of the three marine stations of Sorbonne Université. With about 120 permanent staff, the LOV generates and analyses a large quantity of marine data, including imaging, genomic, and satellite data to study the ocean.

The COMPLEx (COMPutational PLAnkton Ecology) team gathers about fifty members studying marine plankton by collecting data with quantitative imaging instruments and high throughput genomics that informs advanced numerical analysis methods (modeling, statistics, machine learning). Plankton encompasses all organisms roaming with marine currents. Those organisms are responsible for producing some of the oxygen we breathe, storing the carbon we emit, feeding the fish we eat; plankton is therefore a major building block of Earth's ecosystem. COMPLEx strongly interacts with the Quantitative Imaging Platform of Villefranche (PIQv; https://sites.google.com/view/piqv), which oversees the operation of the tools that the team develops. Those tools include imaging sensors, such as the Underwater Vision Profiler or the ZooScan, as well as an increase number of software packages to process and control the quality of the data generated by the instruments, sort images taxonomically (https://ecotaxa.obs-vlfr.fr/) or store and distribute data on the abundance of marine snow particles. The team has a long experience of interactions with engineers and computer scientists, in academia and the private sector, to develop these tools.

Le poste se situe dans un secteur relevant de la protection du potentiel scientifique et technique (PPST), et nécessite donc, conformément à la réglementation, que votre arrivée soit autorisée par l'autorité compétente du MESR.

Contraintes et risques

None

Informations complémentaires

Paid vacation up to 55 days per year.
The laboratory is located in Villefranche-sur-mer and has direct access to the sea.