POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCHER, UNIVERSITY OF PRIMORSKA

Field of expertise: wildlife monitoring, ecology, management, conservation, citizen science

Project description:
The University of Primorska is coordinating institution of a Horizon 2020 project Science Transformation in EuroPe through Citizens involvement in HeAlth, coNservation and enerGy rEsearch. The post holder will be integrated in this project, which focuses on validation of citizen science data in wildlife monitoring. The project aims at exploiting to its full potential, extending and up-scaling the already existing Slovene hunters’ wildlife observation database, by developing data collection software for mobile phones, evaluating the effects of citizens’ training in data collection, and establishing a data validation procedure to minimise biases in data collecting and analysing. The outcomes will be integrated with genetic information and used to foster a dialogue with policy makers and further improve science-based wildlife management.

Your tasks:
You will analyse species diversity, evenness of distribution of different species, population size, different parameters of life-history traits of wild ungulates etc., all these based on data that have been collected by the Slovenian hunting organization since 2006, and new data obtained during the project. You will also contribute to the validation of citizen science and hunters’ data. You should be able to implement a comprehensive approach to combine spatial and presence information with fragmentation of the landscape, timeframe, ecological characteristics of the area etc. You are also expected to be able to run and test models to validate collected data and infer past and future trends.

Your profile:
• A relevant university education with a completed doctoral/PhD degree with a minimum of four first- or corresponding authorship publications in international SCI peer-reviewed journals, and a strong potential in research.
• Relevant knowledge and willingness to work in ecological statistics.
• Willingness to teach (in English or Slovene) at Bachelor and Master studying courses at the University of Primorska, to supervise graduation/master theses, and to promote young scientists. Excellent spoken and written English is required.

We offer:
• The advertised position is for an initial period of 3 years with the possibility to be appointed as Research associate or/and Assistant Professor depending on funding availability and successful evaluation of the candidate.
• The position will be paid according to category of the Collective agreement for employees at Slovenian universities, stipulating an initial gross salary of EUR 2.300 with food and transfer subsidy in line with Slovene labour legislation.

Application instructions:
Interested applicants are requested to send a detailed application in electronic form to stepchange@famnit.upr.si, and “Postdoc in wildlife management” in the object. Please attach in pdf format:
• a CV (with copies of diplomas),
• a list of publications with copies of up to five the most relevant publications.

Application deadline: November 15th, 2020

(September, 4th 2020)