Postdoctoral fellowship (2 year) in statistical contaminant modeling

The Swedish Museum of Natural History has a large and active research environment. At the department of Environmental Research and Monitoring, we are, among other things, responsible for the monitoring of contaminants in marine biota (fish, mussels and bird eggs) in the Baltic Sea. We also conduct research on understanding spatio-temporal trends of contaminants in the environment, and develop tools for improving the use of monitoring data nationally and internationally. In this context, we collaborate with international organizations like Helcom, OSPAR and AMAP.

At the Department of Environmental Research and Monitoring, we are offering a postdoctoral fellowship within a fully funded project aiming at investigating the spatio-temporal variability of contaminant concentrations of Baltic Sea biota with a focus on mercury. We are seeking an ambitious candidate who is interested in developing new statistical tools for spatio-temporal interpolation of environmental data.

WORK TASKS
The fellowship is funded by Formas as a part of the project "Tools for investigating spatio-temporal variability of contaminant concentrations in Baltic Sea biota-mercury as a case study" with the aim to develop new methods for investigating drivers of spatio-temporal mercury variability in biota. The Baltic Sea is of great regional social and economic value, and the surrounding countries have an interest in understanding contaminant exposure in the sea. For some contaminants, such as mercury, no direct link is seen between input loads and biota concentration. Therefore, recent studies emphasize the importance of relating contaminant variability to physio-chemical changes and ecosystem structure and functioning. Various sub-programs within the Swedish National Environmental Monitoring Program conduct their sampling at different locations and development of tools for data interpolation are required to create a uniform dataset that can be used for analysis. The main task in this project will be to develop novel statistical approaches and tools to combine long-term monitoring data from several sub-programs within the Swedish National Environmental Monitoring Program and create a set of spatio-temporal predictive models for mercury in Baltic Sea biota.

The project will be conducted in close collaboration with a multi-disciplinary team of scientists with a background in environmental monitoring, contaminants and statistical research at the Swedish Museum of Natural History (Dr. Anne L. Soerensen, Dr. Martin Sköld, Dr. Suzanne Faxneld), Stockholm University (Prof. Elena Gorokhova) and SLU (Dr. Jens Olsson). Although the study focus is on the Baltic Sea region, the findings from the project should be applicable to many coastal and marine ecosystems. The candidate will work in close collaboration with the project partners, other national institutions and international networks, and publish the results in peer-reviewed journals.

QUALIFICATIONS
The required academic qualification is a doctoral degree, or equivalent foreign degree, in statistics or natural/environmental science. The applicant should have completed the degree not more than three years before the date of application, although this may be waived under certain mitigating circumstances. Experience with advanced statistical modeling and programming in R, or a similar programming language, is required. Candidates for this position with a background in statistics should have an interest in environmental science whereas those with a background in the natural/environmental sciences should have extended experience in working with statistical modeling. Furthermore, the successful candidate must have a very good command of written and spoken English as well as experience writing and publishing scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. Experience in working with large databases and programming in languages besides R is meritorious.

You should be well-organized and able to conduct research both independently and in a group.

OTHER
The Swedish Museum of Natural History strives for gender balance, and ethnic and cultural diversity among its staff.