Postdoctoral Research Fellow

University of Notre Dame • Notre Dame, IN

19h • Onsite

About The Position

The University of Notre Dame invites applications for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with deep expertise in quantitative data analysis, data science, and artificial intelligence (AI). This fellow will join a dynamic, interdisciplinary team working at the intersection of data innovation and sustainability science, aligned with the values and principles of integral ecology. The research fellow will contribute to a new research project that is creating a Pan-Amazon Evidence and Action Hub for socio-economic and ecological flourishing. The hub will systematically synthesize and harmonize remote sensing, survey, census, and citizen science data to support analyses of issues for action in partnership with local communities and Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon region. Fellows will integrate and harmonize fragmented data from diverse sources into a coherent, usable form to support novel analyses that advance key sustainability goals. The work of the Hub will generate findings to support the design and adoption of interventions that respond to changing needs of the region and its people around climate change, energy, mining, soil and water contamination, food production and livelihoods. The postdoctoral fellow will join a cohort that functions as a central research skills hub, supporting and elevating the sustainability-related research efforts of faculty and students across Notre Dame. The fellows will help advance impactful, solution-oriented sustainability research that engages ecological, social, economic, and ethical dimensions in an integrated manner.

Requirements

• Ph.D. (in hand by the starting date) in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Geography, Environmental Science, or a related field with a strong computational focus.
• Strong data engineering skills in Python and/or R, preferably in building reusable data pipelines rather than one-off analysis scripts.
• Demonstrated experience harmonizing heterogeneous data sources: reconciling inconsistent schemas, units, geographies, and vintages across datasets such as remote sensing products, surveys, censuses, and administrative records, and documenting those decisions in a reproducible way.
• Expertise in geospatial data, including working across raster and vector formats, coordinate reference systems, and spatial aggregation or interpolation across mismatched administrative and ecological units.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to translate technical infrastructure decisions for collaborators from a wide range of disciplines.

Nice To Haves

• Applicants with interdisciplinary degrees are welcome.
• An interest or experience in using machine learning or AI tools with environmental or socioeconomic data

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with faculty to design, implement, and support sustainability-related research projects requiring advanced data analytics.
• Develop and maintain a centralized platform for the Pan-Amazon Evidence and Action Hub that hosts diverse and harmonized sustainability-related datasets, including environmental, socioeconomic, cultural, and geospatial data.
• Design and implement reproducible pipelines that ingest, clean, and harmonize fragmented data from remote sensing, survey, census, administrative, and citizen science sources into coherent, analysis-ready datasets with documented lineage and quality metrics.
• Build tools and interfaces (APIs, catalogs, dashboards, or reproducible workflows) that make Hub data discoverable and usable by faculty, students, and partner organizations with varying technical capacity.
• Explore applications of AI methods, including large language models and natural language processing, for extracting structured information from unstructured sources(e.g. reports, policy documents, gray literature, or citizen science observations).
• Apply advanced statistical, machine learning, and AI techniques to analyze complex datasets and uncover actionable insights.
• Co-author and support high-impact, interdisciplinary research publications in leading sustainability and environmental science journals.
• Engage in collaborative grant writing and proposal development to sustain and expand the cohort’s research initiatives.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree