PhD or Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
3 year (PhD) or 2 year (postdoc) fellowship in Cape Town, South Africa
Penguin-krill functional relationships in a region of high fishing pressure
Funded position working on a large biologging dataset from chinstrap penguins breeding in the Antarctic Peninsula. The project aims to better understand penguin-krill functional relationships in a region of high fishing pressure.
Research activities
- The successful incumbent will work with Dr Chris Oosthuizen at the Centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation, University of Cape Town
- Manually label animal-borne video data to serve as training sets in machine learning pipelines
- Analyze video data (e.g., using an open-source underwater imagery analysis system such as Video and Image Analytics for a Marine Environment (VIAME) or other neural network frameworks
- Determine the densities of krill encountered by foraging penguins, and detect the presence or absence of conspecifics while foraging from animal-borne video data
- Lead first author at least one journal article in an accredited journal of high standing for each year of the fellowship tenure
- Contribute to research articles led by other members of the group
Academic criteria
- A PhD (or Master’s degree if applying for a PhD) in a relevant field (e.g. Data Science, Ecology, Marine Science, Statistics, etc.)
- Strong quantitative skills. Familiarity with Machine Learning or analysis of animal telemetry data will be an advantage
- Demonstrable programming skills in R, Python and/or other programming languages
- An ability to work with large data sets and desire to apply statistical modelling and machine learning (deep learning models) to ecological problems (video and signal analysis)
- Proven ability to publish in peer-reviewed journals
- Be independent and driven for academic outcomes
- The ability to work in a multinational collaborative team
- Excellent communication skills, especially written communication
- The postdoctoral research fellowship is onlyavailable to individuals within five (5) years of having achieved a doctoral degree
- Applicants may not previously have held full-time permanent professional or academic posts
Proposed starting date: February 2022
Deadline for applications: 18 November 2021
View the full job description, eligibility information and how to apply.