Kate Bertko
- @Kbertko
- | she/her
We are looking for a postdoc to join us at the University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. The position is focused on the fate and transport of eDNA in marine environments from marine mammal targets.
Please apply using this link. A detailed description of the position is listed below.
University of Washington
School of Marine & Environmental Affairs eDNA Postdoctoral Scholar
Organization: Marine and Environmental Affairs
Title: School of Marine & Environmental Affairs eDNA Postdoctoral Scholar
This position is funded to work on a new grant from the Office of Naval Research as part of the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) awards. The project, entitled “MMARINeDNA: Marine Mammal Remote detection via INnovative environmental DNA sampling,” aims to understand the transport, persistence, and distribution of environmental DNA (eDNA) in marine environments from marine mammal targets. The project team includes researchers from the University of Washington in both the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA) and School of Oceanography, as well as researchers at University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, and NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, CA.
The postdoctoral fellow in this position will develop and analyze environmental DNA (eDNA) data, developing a statistical model to describe the fate and transport of marine mammal eDNA as a part of the larger MMARINeDNA project. The postdoc will work closely with oceanographers, integrating the molecular-biological (eDNA) information into an existing oceanographic model of the Puget Sound region’s waters, ultimately aiming to predict the origin and abundance of a point sources of observed eDNA. This position will mainly focus on the biology, with oceanography work being largely done by an oceanography postdoc also funded by the larger project.
The position will entail planning and conducting short field-sampling campaigns, as well as processing quantitative PCR and other eDNA data, but the main focus will be statistical modeling of those resulting data over space and time.
This is an on-campus, in-person position, and the successful candidate will work in Seattle at the University of Washington. The term is one year, renewable subject to performance and available funding; the larger MMARINeDNA project is funded for a five-year period.