Postdoctoral Associate: Quantifying emerging risks of wildfire smoke birds of North America

Postdoctoral Associate:
Quantifying the emerging risks of wildfire smoke for birds of North America

About Us:

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) is a pioneer of purpose-driven science and Cornell University’s second largest college. We work across disciplines to tackle the challenges of our time through world-renowned research, education, and outreach. The questions we probe and the answers we seek focus on three overlapping concerns:
We believe that achieving next-generation scientific breakthroughs requires an understanding of the world’s complex, interlocking systems. We believe that access to nutritious food and a healthy environment is a fundamental human right. We believe that ensuring a prosperous global future depends on the ability to support local people and communities everywhere. By working in and across multiple scientific areas, CALS can address challenges and opportunities of the greatest relevance, here in New York, across the nation, and around the world.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is both an academic unit within CALS and a non-profit organization. Our mission is to interpret and conserve the earth's biological diversity through research, education, and participatory science focused on birds. The Center for Avian Population Studies (CAPS) and The Center for Engagement in Science and Nature (CESN) are two of the major programmatic units at the Lab.

CAPS is focused on collecting and disseminating biodiversity data (e.g., eBird) to enhance the information and decision-making tools available to conservationists and scientific researchers. The center achieves this by producing scientific, computational, and big data resources that transform how we understand and protect the world around us. CESN engages the public by gathering biological information at large spatial scales (e.g., Feeder Watch, Nest Watch) while creating dynamic educational content and web applications through which the public can better understand the natural world.

The Cornell Lab is widely viewed as a global leader in the field of participatory science, managing exemplary projects that engage the public while pursuing methodological innovation for moving the field forward.

The Cornell Lab is home to a vibrant community of several dozen postdoctoral associates working across programs. We strive to provide a supportive and collaborative environment for this community that fosters personal growth and career advancement. We recognize that diverse, inclusive communities create more innovative and impactful work to address global challenges and benefit humanity and nature.

We seek a creative, collaborative Postdoctoral Associate with experience in quantitative ecology and large spatial datasets. The successful candidate will lead interdisciplinary research leveraging the Cornell Lab’s extensive participatory science and migration datasets to advance knowledge of the emerging risks of wildfire smoke for North American birds. The Postdoctoral Associate will use data products from eBird Status and Trends, Project Feeder Watch, and Bird Cast to quantify population-level exposure to smoke particulates and investigate how birds respond to smoke in real time.

More specifically, projects will focus on (1) year-round smoke exposure, (2) impacts on migrating birds, and (3) impacts during historic wintertime fires. The successful candidate will work closely with researchers in both the Center for Avian Population Studies and the Center for Engagement in Science and Nature at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to tackle emerging questions of critical conservation importance while gaining experience working with large-scale, interdisciplinary datasets.

The successful candidate will also…