Northern Arizona University: PhD positions in Ecological Informatics are available in the School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems (SICCS) at Northern Arizona University. The SICCS mission is to conduct high-impact, innovative research in environmental and ecological informatics with an emphasis on understanding problems and engineering solutions that lead to benefits in human and environmental health.
Research opportunities are available in the following areas linked to specific SICCS faculty:
Chris Doughty: The impact of animal extinctions on ecosystem services, tropical forest carbon cycling, spectroscopy remote sensing and astrobiology.
Scott Goetz: Remote sensing & geospatial analysis of bio-geophysical processes at regional to global scales, with focus on boreal and tropical forests.
Joe Mihaljevic: Infectious disease dynamics in wildlife and human hosts, sequencing multi- pathogen communities, building and parameterizing epidemiological models, fitting models to data, and Bayesian inference.
Kiona Ogle: Plant and ecosystem functioning in arid and semi-arid systems (carbon and water relations in woodlands and deserts) and temperate forests (tree functional traits, tree growth), and applications of Bayesian methods to synthesize data in the context of ecological process models.
Andrew Richardson: Terrestrial ecosystems and global change, biosphere-atmosphere interactions, model-data fusion, sensor networks, near-surface remote sensing, and “big data” in ecology (e.g. PhenoCam, FLUXNET).
Ben Ruddell: Ecology of Complex & Coupled Natural-Human Systems, including cities, Food-Energy-Water (http://fewsion.us), networks, critical infrastructure, health, sustainability, and resilience.
Temuulen “Teki” Sankey: Remote sensing and geo-informatics in the southwest with UAV and lidar applications.
Graduate student benefits include stipends (TA or RA), tuition waiver, health insurance, support for summer fieldwork in a variety of beautiful ecosystems, and winter in the peaks of sunny Flagstaff, AZ. Candidates should explore the SICCS website (www.nau.edu/siccs) and contact the professor whose interests align most closely. Please include a cover letter describing background, research interests, and qualifications, as well as a current resume.
Program applications can be submitted to the School of Informatics, Computing & Cyber Systems OR the Graduate College and are due January 15, 2018 after communicating with a faculty member. Applications received early may be considered for a prestigious NAU Presidential Fellowship.