Research Associate I or II

Research Associate I Or II

The Geosystems Research Institute (GRI) at Mississippi State University (MSU) is seeking a highly motivated and self-driven Research Associate I or II to support a NOAA-funded research project focused on drought assessment, non-stationarity, and regionalization across the southeastern United States.

The successful candidate will work as part of an interdisciplinary research team conducting hydrologic, meteorological, statistical, and geospatial analyses. The Research Associate will be involved in all stages of formal project analysis and regionalization efforts, including data acquisition and preparation, drought characterization, time-series analysis, statistical modeling, geospatial analysis, regional classification, interpretation of results, and preparation of research products. Candidates may have primary expertise in either quantitative/statistical analysis or geospatial/scientific data analysis.

Applicants with experience spanning both areas are particularly encouraged to apply. The position will involve working with large environmental datasets and developing reproducible analytical workflows using Python, R, GIS, and related scientific computing tools. The Research Associate will collaborate closely with project investigators and other team members and will contribute to technical reports, scientific publications, presentations, data products, and other project deliverables.

Salary Grade: 13

Please see Staff Compensation Structure or Skilled Crafts and Service Maintenance Compensation Schedule for salary ranges. For salary grade UC, these positions are "Unclassified" and salary ranges are determined by the hiring department.

The Geosystems Research Institute is a collaborative of academic scientists, engineers, and government and industry stakeholders active in conducting research to advance knowledge and practice in earth and its systems to improve policy and public awareness. The Geosystems Research Institute's approach to research provides an avenue for Mississippi State University to build strong relationships with local, regional, and national agencies and businesses to do work aimed at solving some of today's most pressing environmental issues.

In helping carry out Mississippi State University's mission of service and outreach, the Geosystems Research Institute offers a variety of educational opportunities and services to assist researchers, state and federal entities, and the public in utilizing geospatial technologies and data.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Acquire, organize, quality-control, process, and manage hydrologic, meteorological, climatic, and geospatial datasets.
• Develop and maintain reproducible workflows for processing and analyzing large scientific datasets.
• Support hydrologic drought analysis, including drought-event delineation, drought magnitude and frequency characterization, and calculation and evaluation of the Standardized Streamflow Index (SSI).
• Support meteorological drought analysis, including calculation and evaluation of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI).
• Conduct or support statistical and time-series analyses used to characterize short- and long-term variability and identify non-stationarity in hydroclimatic records.
• Assist with analysis of trends, change points, changes in variability, temporal persistence, and other characteristics of environmental time series.
• Support development, application, and evaluation of statistical models used for stationary and non-stationary drought assessment.
• Conduct or support cross-correlation and related analyses to evaluate temporal relationships between meteorological and hydrological drought conditions.
• Compile and integrate hydrologic, meteorological, statistical, and spatial analysis results for regional drought assessment.
• Conduct clustering, classification, and spatial analyses used to identify regions with similar drought characteristics.
• Incorporate relevant environmental and geographic variables into regionalization analyses.
• Support analysis and assimilation of drought and non-stationarity indicators used in regional aridification assessment.
• Process and analyze raster, vector, tabular, and time-series datasets using Python, R, GIS, or related analytical software.
• Utilize high-performance computing resources when appropriate for large-scale or computationally intensive analyses.
• Prepare maps, figures, statistical summaries, tables, datasets, and other scientific products for reports, presentations, publications, and project applications.
• Maintain clear documentation of analytical methods, data-processing procedures, scripts, workflows, and research products.
• Assist with interpretation and quality control of research results.
• Contribute to technical reports, scientific manuscripts, conference presentations, and other project deliverables.
• Participate in project meetings and communicate analytical progress,…