The research center “Smart technologies for sustainable development of urban environment under global changes” of RUDN University announces a job opening for a Postdoctoral position within the PhD program “Green Infrastructure & Sustainable Development”.
The program is scheduled for 3 years (September 2022 – November 2025) and will be taught in English. The applicant’s tuition will be funded from the public budget in addition to a salary following the results of the interview. The PhD position promises to give an excellent opportunity to participate in scientific and application-oriented projects, as well as a chance to implement one’s own project by subject of grants from scientific funds, economic and contractual work and the RUDN University grant support system. Moreover, postdoctoral researchers will get to obtain a double scientific supervision and dissertation defense on the basis of Russian and / or foreign councils.
The Smart Urban Nature research center was established in early 2018 to consolidate research by the structural units of RUDN University and partner organizations specializing in the field of sustainable urban ecosystems. Scientific director of the laboratory – Professor Ricardo Valentini, Nobel laureate of 2007 in the IPCC and one of the most cited scientists in the world in the field of environmental study.
The main areas of the lab’s work cover:
- development of modern methods and technologies for monitoring anthropogenic ecosystems and their components, including remote methods, express methods, non-destructive technologies and the use of Internet of things technologies for environmental monitoring tasks;
- analysis, modeling and evaluation of ecosystem services for sustainable urban development;
- assessment and modeling of the impact of climatic conditions (including anomalies) on the state and functioning of urban green spaces and soils;
- modeling and design of sustainable urban ecosystems and their components at various levels (from local to global);
- interdisciplinary research in the field of sustainable urban development.
As a member of the research team, postdoctoral fellow will get the chance to work in a young ambitious international team under the scientific supervision of the world’s leading scientists in the field of ecology, soil science, sustainable development (R. Valentini, J. Kuzyakov, E. Blagodatskaya, S. Castaldi, C. Calfapietra, A. Neaman) and cooperate with the world’s best scientific groups from Cornell University, Wageningen University, Berlin Technical University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Research Council of Italy, etc. The proposed position also provides an opportunity to participate in international conferences, internships, summer schools, joint preparation of scientific publications in leading international scientific journals. The future fellow will have a chance to participate in the implementation of Russian and international grants, scientific and educational projects and contractual work.
As for requirements for the admission, the applicant must have a master or specialist degree and the skill of independent scientific work in the field of ecology, landscape design, forestry, soil science, geography, biology and related disciplines of environmental science. The applicant must also prove his proficiency in English sufficient for studying and working on an international level.
There are also a series of additional advantages for the applicants which they allowed to provide within the admission:
- availability of publication in journals indexed in Scopus/WoS,
- experience in Russian and/or international scientific projects as a leader or executor,
- experience in organizing and conducting laboratory and/or field studies and environmental surveys,
- skills in working with specialized software (R, QGIS, ArcGIS, ENVI, Ecognition, MatLab, HYDRUS, etc.)
- availability of skills/experience in related disciplines and in interdisciplinary areas (mathematical modeling, big data analysis, economics, sociology, ecosystem services valuation) and willingness to gain such skills/experience.
The vacancy is open from the 1st of April, 2022. All interested candidates can send their CVs to the following e-mails: vasenev-vi@rudn.ru and korneykova-mv@rudn.ru.