The Department of Fisheries Wildlife and Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities seeks a postdoctoral associate to begin 2014.
This individual will join a large, dynamic, and interdisciplinary team from across the U.S. that is funded by NSF Frontiers in Earth-System Dynamics grant 1135427 (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1135427). This team is conducting field work and developing quantitative models to predict how physical, chemical and biological processes interact to affect the dynamics of coastal river deltas. The individual will couple an existing spatially-explicit, individual-based fish food web model to a larger model that describes sediment and vegetation dynamics on an evolving river delta. The individual will then use this model to i) predict how fish productivity is distributed in both space and time, ii) develop indices of habitat suitability that predict species presence or abundance, and iii) identify restoration scenarios (e.g., sediment mixture, discharge pattern) that optimize fish productivity. Other research avenues are possible provided that they fit in with the overall objective of the project, which is to predict river delta dynamics over engineering to geologic time-scales, and to address questions of system dynamics, resiliency, and sustainability. This individual will be based in Paul Venturelli’s lab in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, and will collaborate with Doug Edmonds, Department of Geological Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington (http://geology.indiana.edu/edmonds/index.html). Start date is negotiable but ideally would be in the first quarter of 2014. The review of applications begins 20 December. For complete details, including duties, qualifications, and application instructions, visit https://employment.umn.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/Welcome_css.jsp and search requisition number 188071 Paul Venturelli Assistant Professor Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota 135 Skok Hall, 2003 Upper Buford Circle, St Paul, MN 55108 phone 612-624-4228, fax 612-625-5299 www.paulventurelli.net "Our capacity to simulate the future...could save us from the worst selfish excess" Richard Dawkins
