We seek a highly motivated post-doctoral researcher with strong skills in statistics and mathematics to participate in research activities in the area of ecology and epidemiology of infectious diseases. The candidate will primarily work with an international research group for risk assessment and early warning of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) in Asia. The candidate will focus on data synthesis, spatial and mathematical modeling of highly pathogenic avian influenza. Disparate datasets from various research activities will be used, including H5N1 outbreaks and surveillance, agriculture, environment, poultry and wild birds. The candidate will also participate in field data collection, proposal writing and research project development.

Position Duration: The position will start with one-year support and may be renewable depends upon project progress, candidate’s performance and fund availability. The position could start as early as April 1, 2013.

Qualification: The candidate should have a Ph.D. degree in biology, ecology, epidemiology, geography, statistics or mathematics. He/she should have good skills with statistic software (e.g., R), and computer programming language, and some basic concepts of geospatial technologies (remote sensing and geographical information system).

Compensation: The position offers competitive salary commensurate with candidate’s qualification and experience (US$40K to US$50K per year). Post-doctoral researcher also receives university employee benefits, including medical, dental and life insurance.

Contact Person: Please send your application materials (resume, a statement of research interest, 1-2 SCI papers about your work in ecology and epidemiology of infectious diseases, and contact information of 3 references) to Prof. Xiangming Xiao (xiangming.xiao@ou.edu). Review of applications will continue until the position is filled or the search is closed.

The Earth Observation and Modeling Facility (http://www.eomf.ou.edu) is a program at both the Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology (http://mpbio.ou.edu/) and the Center for Spatial Analysis (http://csa.ou.edu/). It is located at the Stephenson Research and Technology Center (http://srtc.ou.edu/) on the research campus. The EOMF has a state-of-the-art computational facility, which includes 400+ Terabyte raid disk system and 10 Linux servers; and it has access to the OU’s supercomputer facility that is equipped with 1040 quad-core CPU chips. The EOMF data portal hosts several hundred terabytes of data (e.g., satellite images, geo-referenced field photos from citizen science, climate) to support the studies of ecology, forestry, agriculture, and epidemiology of infectious diseases. The EOMF aims to develop a strong research and education program that integrates geo-informatics, eco-informatics and bio-informatics.

January 16, 2013