Postdoctoral Associate

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) is a pioneer of purpose-driven science and home to Cornell University’s second largest population of students, faculty and staff. 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: natural and human systems;

food, energy and environmental resources; and social, physical and economic well-being. CALS is fundamentally invested in improving the lives of people, their environments and their communities both in New York state and around the world.

Cornell's Food Systems & Global Change (FSGC) team is a part of the Department of Global Development, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and focuses on increasing the sustainability of food systems for the benefit of humans and ecosystems. We work in the areas of sustainable intensification of agriculture, climate mitigation and adaptation, livestock systems, and healthy and sustainable diets, providing analysis and insights aimed at helping to shape the decision-making process at all relevant levels.

The livestock sector is a crucial component of the food system and, due to its impacts and contributions, can play a defining role in any sensible development strategy. We are looking for a motivated postdoc to provide support in performing analyses to guide decision making in the livestock sector ?in order to support sustainable food systems transitions.

Livestock systems are important for food security, rural livelihoods, land use, nutrient cycling, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, they can also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, pressure on land and water resources, and other environmental impacts. Identifying effective interventions therefore requires a systems perspective that brings together animal biology, herd and flock management, feed resources, land use, environmental outcomes, economic feasibility, and adoption potential across diverse socioeconomic contexts.

We are seeking a Postdoctoral Associate to support research on livestock systems and sustainable food-system transitions. The successful candidate will contribute to multi-scale and multidimensional analyses designed to guide mitigation and adaptation interventions in the livestock sector, including changes in herd and flock management, animal nutrition, feed resources, animal genetics, land use, grazing management, and emerging technologies. The position will involve working with large regional and global datasets, developing and applying quantitative models, evaluating environmental and productivity outcomes, and supporting the design and analysis of case studies.

The successful candidate will work as part of an interdisciplinary team and collaborate with researchers, students, external partners, and stakeholders. The position will involve data analysis, model development, manuscript preparation, project coordination, occasional mentoring of junior researchers, and dissemination of findings through peer-reviewed publications, reports, presentations, and stakeholder-facing outputs.

• Evaluate mitigation and adaptation strategies ranging from incremental management changes to more transformative interventions, including changes in diets, grazing management, feed resources, animal genetics, plant breeding, land use, and emerging technologies.
• Conduct multi-scale analyses of livestock production systems, including global, regional, national, and case-study applications.
• Characterize livestock systems across ruminant and monogastric species, including herd and flock parameters and dynamics, feed composition, and variables related to production-system typologies.
• Develop, adapt, and apply quantitative models to assess livestock interventions, including process-based, biophysical, spatial, and integrated assessment approaches.
• Integrate biophysical, environmental, economic, and social dimensions to assess intervention feasibility, tradeoffs, adoption potential, and context-specific outcomes.
• Analyze greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts associated with livestock production systems, including methane, nitrous oxide, feed-related emissions, land-use interactions, and nutrient flows.
• Support the identification and development of case studies for livestock management…