Reporting to the Director of Science and the Senior Research Leader of Biodiversity Informatics & Spatial Analysis (BI&SA), you will be a member of the Spatial Analysis research team with responsibility for carrying out and publishing research applying modelling approaches to crops, crop wild relatives and other resource-providing plants relevant to both the needs of the Food Security Impacts of Industrial Crop Expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa project and the overarching themes of BI&SA and Kew’s science strategy.
Contract end date:20 Month Contract
Location:Kew Gardens, Richmond
This role and the Food Security Impacts of Industrial Crop Expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa project (FICESSA;http://igfagcr.org/funded-projects/food-security-impacts-industrial-crop-expansion-sub-sahara-africa-ficessa) it supports form important parts of RBG, Kew’s new Biodiversity Informatics & Spatial Analysis (BI&SA) group. The FICESSA project will be directed at RBG, Kew by Prof. Kathy Willis (Director of Science, RBG, Kew) and Dr. Marc Macias-Fauria, Associate Professor of Physical Geography & School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, both of whom are co-PIs on the project.
You will be responsible for carrying out and publishing research applying modelling approaches to crops, crop wild relatives and other resource-providing plants relevant to both the needs of the project and the overarching themes of BI&SA and Kew’s science strategy. Thus you will possess a very high level of expertise in modelling species distributions and be able to adapt this approach to the special characteristics of agricultural crops. This might involve modifying modelling algorithms and/or employing datasets of non-climate parameters such as plant traits or land use.
You will need to be qualified to PhD level with a demonstrated level of excellence in modelling species distributions that can be adapted to crop plants and significant publications in this research field as lead author. You will possess excellent communication skills, including the ability to write for publication, present research proposals and results, and represent the research group at meetings. You will also need to demonstrate competence in a suitable programming language such as R or Python. Experience of independently managing a discrete area of research and proven ability to develop ideas for new research projects and income generation
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