Research assistant position (Engineer) on “Meta-analysis of numerical models for agroecology&

Applications are invited for a research assistant / engineer position at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). The successful candidate will be part of an interdisciplinary research project on the trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services across spatial scales (“Agroecology and policy instruments for sustainable multifunctional agricultural landscapes”), financed by the Labex BASC (www.inra.fr/basc). He/She will be supervised by Francesco Accatino (INRA-AgroParisTech, SAD-APT, Paris) and Simon Labarthe (INRA, MaIAGE, Jouy-en-Josas).

The objective of the position is to explore the trade-offs among different ecosystem services (including food production) at multiple spatial scales through a meta-analysis and exploration of existing numerical models dedicated to different fields of agroecology (e.g., land use optimization, epidemiology, population ecology, agronomy, economics). The tasks devoted to the successful candidate are: 1) To study and understand the different numerical models of the project, in dialogue with the researchers that developed them, 2) to formalize a set of exploratory scenarios defined with the partners of the project, 3) to develop input/output interfaces to adapt the scenarios to the models and implement the meta-analysis, 4) to develop post processing tools to aggregate, analyze and visualize the model outputs, 5) to perform a sensitivity analysis of the different models to enhance the discussion of the meta-analysis.

Keywords: Interfacing heterogeneous models, script (python, R,...), interdisciplinary modeling
Salary: The position is funded for 18 months, with a gross monthly salary varying from 2300 to 2500€ (depending on experience). The position could start as soon as the 1st of July, 2018.

Contact details: Applications, including a CV, a cover letter and a list of references with contact details, should be sent by email (subject: "API-SMAL research engineer application") to Vincent Martinet (vincent.martinet@inra.fr), Francesco Accatino (francesco.accatino@inra.fr) and Simon Labarthe (simon.labarthe@inra.fr) before the 1st of May, 2018. Auditions will take place between May 14 and May 16, with a decision on May 20. Later applications may be considered if the position is not filled.