UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre and Microsoft Research, Cambridge, invite applications for joint post-doctoral research scientists to research and develop novel global biodiversity models.

The project aims, to complement earlier work by the GLOBIO partnership, to collaborate with Microsoft Research and others to explore new approaches to model the response of biodiversity to multiple factors including, but not limited to, habitat loss and climate change. We aim to build a team of postdoctoral scientists that will combine various ideas and approaches from community and ecosystem ecology, with various global-scale data sets, to enable the international community to assess the impacts of alternative policies on biodiversity and ecosystem function.

We are seeking enthusiastic and motivated post-doctoral scientists to explore potential drivers and pressures underlying the loss of biodiversity, and how these factors might be used to predict future changes in biodiversity; develop a scheme for grouping species into ecologically meaningful units with a view to generating better models and more relevant biodiversity projections; develop an expanded, and improved, set of biodiversity metrics than those currently available; rigorously and transparently develop a new global biodiversity model, and test and validate the model at global scales, and within particular regions, for example in DRC and New Guinea or UN REDD countries. The successful applicants need to have analytical, programming and GIS skills and be able to communicate, collaborate and convene a wide range of stakeholders. The successful applicants will play a key role in shaping the role of science at UNEP-WCMC, understand and support contemporary UN processes and have an interest in bridging the science policy interface.

These are three-year fixed term positions, based at the offices of UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge, UK, but with an expectation of very frequent collaboration with scientists in the Microsoft Research Computational Ecology and Environment Science group, also based in Cambridge, UK. The salary is negotiable within UNEP-WCMC’s existing bands.

Applicants who meet the requirements are invited, by 18th September 2009, to complete and send an application form attaching their CV and a one-page covering letter identifying their specific skills and knowledge in relation to this vacancy to recruitment@unep-wcmc.org . For further information on this role, including the application form, please visit the jobs page on  www.unep-wcmc.org.