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Employment & Research Opportunities

PhD Position in Climate Downscaling

We are recruiting a PhD student to impact of climate change on the ecology of pastoral agroecosystems in the French Pyrenees as part of an US-NSF-funded project with collaborators in France and Spain. The student will be enrolled at the University of Georgia, but may spend significant field time in the Pyrenees. The student will be advised by Thomas Mote (https://geography.uga.edu/directory/people/thomas-mote) with the possibility of time in residence at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (https://www.bc3research.org). The project uses transdisciplinary approaches to understand and predict how climate, policy, and social change will impact the socioecological system of pastoralism that is deeply rooted in Basque culture. This student will work as part of an interdisciplinary team of social and natural scientists from the US, France, and Spain. The student’s primary responsibilities will involve interrogating and interpreting existing climate model downscaling products and ancillary geospatial data sets to make climate change projections that will be used to inform soil scientists, rangeland scientists, and social scientists on the team.

 

Desired qualifications include experience with large climate data sets, scientific data formats, demonstrated ability using remotely sensed data in geographic information system framework, strong statistical, oral and written communication skills, and demonstrated effectiveness working in diverse teams and independently. Proficiency in French or Spanish is desirable but not required.

 

We hope to select an applicant through an advanced review process so that an official application can be submitted through the UGA graduate school (http://www.grad.uga.edu/) by February 3, 2023, but at the latest by April 2023 for admission in Fall 2023. Interested candidates should send their CV and a personal research statement to Thomas Mote (tmote@uga.edu) with DISES PhD in the subject line as soon as possible. The successful student will receive a competitive stipend for up to 5 years along with a tuition wavier.

 

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

 

 

 

Fully-Funded PhD Opportunity in Remote Sensing and Plant Phenotyping

The Departments of Plant Biology and Crop and Soil Sciences at the University of Georgia, in collaboration with the university's Disruptive Geospatial Technologies Lab and Center for Geospatial Research, are seeking a PhD student to investigate relationships between plant biometrics collected in the field and plant descriptors derived from drone-based remote sensing. A fully-funded PhD student will join a team of researchers and will collect, assemble and analyze geospatial datasets including direct field measurements and remotely-sensed observations in support of high-throughput plant phenotyping studies. The target crops are sorghum and switchgrass.

The successful candidate must hold an MSc degree with training in plant science, agriculture, geography, or related field with specific expertise in analytical methods and techniques, including remote sensing and the processing of datasets collected directly in the field.

Desired skills will include familiarity with the topics below (skills can be supplemented during coursework):

Field methods applied to plant science studies

Collection and processing of images (RGB, multispectral, hyperspectral) and LiDAR data. Processing includes, among others, data transformations, generation of vegetation and other spectral indices, generation of point clouds from images (Structure from Motion), processing of LiDAR data, and the extraction of derived metrics

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the processing and analysis of multitemporal geospatial datasets

Use of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) for high positional accuracy

Statistical methods for geospatial data analysis and familiarity with a statistical package

Experience in flying drones and remote sensors for data collection.

Interested candidates should send a CV, statement of research interests (no more than one page) and a copy of graduate and undergraduate transcripts (unofficial transcripts are acceptable) to Prof. Katrien Devos (kdevos@uga.edu) and to Dr. Sergio Bernardes (sbernard@uga.edu).

This is a fully funded Graduate Assistant position at the PhD level, based in Athens, Georgia, United States. Expected start date is January or August 2023.

 

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