Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Post-Doctoral Research Associate

UT School of Natural Resources

The national SARS-CoV-2/cervid Targeted Surveillance Team ( surveillance.com) is seeking a post-doctoral researcher. The Team's overarching objective is to uncover the ecological conditions that generate spatial hotspots of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and persistence in free-ranging cervids. We are particularly excited about recruiting individuals with strong interests in interdisciplinary disease ecology and specific skills in spatial ecology, animal movement modeling, statistics, epidemiological modeling, and population modeling. The Team will use movement and disease data across deer populations in the United States to i) develop new methods for movement-driven modeling of spatio-temporal infection risk ii) build and analyze movement-explicit epidemiological models to generate environmentally and behaviorally informed spatial maps of SARS-CoV-2 transmission potential and iii) use predicted transmission potential to identify shared drivers of SARS-CoV-2 spread and persistence across white-tailed deer populations. The work will be in collaboration with a broader team of researchers from seven universities collecting SARS-CoV-2 surveillance data in wildlife and the USDA, Wildlife Services, National Wildlife Research Center. The finalist will have the opportunity to interact closely with the multi-disciplinary team of movement, disease, and wildlife ecologists, and will be expected to write manuscripts for academic journals, participate in regular collaboration meetings, and present results at meetings and academic conferences.