Position Summary

NRDC has an opening beginning in September 2012 for a two-year, full-time Science Fellow. The Fellow will be located for at least one year in NRDC’s San Francisco or New York offices.

During the two-year fellowship, the Fellow will also participate in activities related to NRDC’s Science Center and receive additional guidance and mentoring from Science Center staff. The Fellow will be supported by NRDC’s Science Center, whose mission is to expand NRDC's scientific capabilities and increase support for the role of science in public policy, and will work with NRDC’s Oceans Program and several academic scientists on a spatial analysis identifying ocean acidification ‘hotspots’ in the U.S. and globally.

The research project is one of the initial projects of the National Science Foundation’s new National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). The Fellow will work with the principal investigators for the study (Dr. Lisa Suatoni, NRDC – policy expert; Dr. Sarah Cooley, Woods Hole Oceanographic – oceanographer; Dr. Linwood Pendleton, Duke University/NOAA – economist and Dr. Will McClintock, U.C. Santa Barbara – spatial analyst and modeler) and attend all project meetings with the full team at the SESYNC Center.

Responsibilities

Specifically, the Fellow will support the acquisition and aggregation of marine geospatial and social data from disparate formats into a single geodatabase for visualization and analysis in desktop GIS applications and a new web-mapping application called SeaSketch (www.seasketch.org). Responsibilities will include building and integrating synthetic data products, making those products available and useable for scientists, planners and engineers, and working with the project team to describe, interpret and disseminate the results.

The Fellow’s work will result in one or more peer-reviewed, published articles in the scientific literature. The Fellow will also use NRDC’s outreach capacity and its relationships with government decision-makers to communicate results as they are available. This will ensure that the Fellow’s work will be relevant to critical policy decisions soon after the beginning of her/his assignment.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• M.S. in Geography, Marine Science or related field.
• Minimum of 3 years relevant professional work experience.
• Strong technical skills using ArcGIS Desktop 10.
• Experience with data conversion, cartography, quality control and documentation.
• Experience in scripting data management and conversion tasks.
• Ability to work effectively with minimal supervision and clearly communicate and interact in a small team environment.
• Excellent writing skills.

Desirable Qualifications:

• Ph.D. in related field.
• 5 years of relevant professional work experience.
• Experience working with industry, academia, NGOs, state and federal natural resource agencies in the marine sector.
• Working knowledge of ArcGIS Server 10.
• Knowledge of open source mapping technologies, including GRASS, R, OGR/GDAL, PostGIS, and others.

Interested applicants should email application materials by August 31, 2012 to www.nrdc.org/jobs.No phone calls or faxes, please