Research Scientist, Department of Plant Sciences - UTIA

University of Tennessee•Knoxville, TN

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Research Consultant is a high-level position responsible for independently leading the design, development, testing, and scientific publishing of a cutting-edge robotic inventory system. The incumbent will lead the development of complex computer programs using Python, integrating sensors, robots, and GPS-based navigation for automatically counting trees, measuring tree structures, and identifying tree locations. This role involves planning and executing laboratory, virtual environment, and field experiments to validate and improve system accuracy, writing test reports, and evaluating experimental successes and failures. The position requires troubleshooting and making course corrections to achieve project success within the project timeline. The incumbent will serve as the primary author on multiple scientific manuscripts and is responsible for the success of this project.

Requirements

Master’s degree – Computer Information Science, Computer Engineering, Computer Programming
At least three years of experience providing design, development, methods, and data analysis for research projects as a scientist or research analyst.
At least two years providing consultative services for research projects as a scientist or research analyst.
At least three years of experience programming with Python.
An equivalent combination of education, training, and experience will be considered.

Nice To Haves

Four or more years participating in the design, development, methods, and data analysis of research projects.
Three or more years providing consultative services for research projects.
Four or more years of experience programming in Python.

Responsibilities

Provides high-level expertise and knowledge in experimental procedures that are needed for planning, coding, and troubleshooting based on the unique needs of unmanned autonomous ground vehicles systems in real and virtual environments including navigation and targeting, identifying, and counting trees for inventory.
Designs experiments, develops novel experimental protocols and data collect techniques, and evaluates progress and plans modifications to address challenges and achieve project success.
Responsible for complete design and development of software including databases and computer programming to geo-map and compile tree inventory data.
Independently develop a model for tree growth for multiple tree species and anticipate dates by which crops reach their target size.
Autonomously develop cloud-base storage solutions that interface with industry-accessible inventory, workflow, and financial software.
Provide project leadership for planning, organizing and conducting novel experiments including decision-making responsibility for scheduling, resource allocation, and work flow to conduct experiments on time, efficiently and effectively.
Designing protocols and utilizing and/or developing novel methods to create advanced protocols, i.e., interoperate with other Python packages from the ROS 2 ecosystem, with the goal of developing increasing the efficiency of future experiments in virtual environments.
Reviews, independently interprets results from his or her ongoing experiments, and makes adjustments to improve experimental test subjects, test conditions, payload, programming and experimental methods of future experiments.
Decides the test materials for inclusion in new experiments in the field and in virtual environments.
Provides technical expertise and direction for experiments including determining experimental design, developing coding solutions, methods and timing for collecting data, methods to statistically analyze, summarize and present data, and criteria with which to measure the success of experiments to other researchers on the research team.
Mentor and develop young scientists (post docs, graduate and undergraduate students) in the program.
Serve as lead author of research reports, present research to academic peers and industry audiences.
Provide leadership and guidance to junior research team members on scientific writing.
Serve as lead author of white papers, present results to government agencies and national stakeholder boards.
Serve as lead author on scientific manuscripts from their independent research and contribute as coauthor to other manuscripts from the broader research project, as appropriate.