Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Materializing Data, Embodying Climate Change (Software Programmer)

The opportunity

Materializing Data, Embodying Climate Change brings together Central Saint Martins, the British Antarctic Survey and Birkbeck, University of London in a ground-breaking three-year project to explore how physical translations of climate data can enable new cultural representations of the changing environment. 

The role offers a unique opportunity to work with internationally respected artists, designers and scientists. You will be a skilled programmer able to operate comfortably across creative, scientific and technical domains. Reporting to the Principal Investigator (PI), Professor Corby, in collaboration with other core team members at the British Antarctic Survey and Birkbeck, the post-holder will develop software for the exploration and processing of climate data from analysis of geo-science datasets, to tool development for 3D modelling and physical output. You will work with a range of data resources (including, but not limited to: ocean temperature, salinity, ice, atmospherics, gas, biotics, pollen, plankton, geological processes) using Python and commonly used climate, geo-data and spatial data formats. You will work closely with a Postdoctoral Research Assistant model-maker responsible for outputting data to digital 3D and physical models, and will have responsibility for academic reporting and documentation of research (conference papers, journal articles and other outputs), in collaboration with the PI and other core staff. The project is funded by the UK Arts and Huminites Research Council.

About you

Essential qualifications, skills and experience:

You will have a relevant postgraduate qualification in computer, data or computational science, earth sciences, physics or other relevant disciplines. You will be experienced in software development methodologies and practice for the production of high-level software delivery, including managing large-scale software source code, software maintenance and quality control. You will have experience of data programming using Python and appropriate data formats. The project is interdisciplinary in focus and you will be comfortable working in a collaborative team environment, capable of working independently to set and solve problems in the course of research. You will also have a good working knowledge of:

• software development practice, including languages such as Python; unit and integration testing; source code management tools such as GitHub or similar
• data programming frameworks for Python, such as Pandas and scikit-learn or similar
• climate and GIS data programming using Python and appropriate data formats 
• modern agile software development methodologies
• 3D modelling and printing frameworks or APIs for Python, such as Blender, OpenSCAD or similar.

Desirable qualifications, skills and experience:

A PhD in computer, data or computational science, physics, earth sciences, physics or a related scientific discipline. And a good working knowledge of:

• processing time series and geospatial data in a climate monitoring context
• Python geospatial frameworks, such as Shapely, Geopandas, GDAL or similar
• geospatial data formats, such as NetCDF, ASCII Text, ESRI Shapefile or GeoTIFF
• producing visual and spatial representations of climate and geodata.

Posting date - 13 March 2019

Closing date - 17 April 2019

If you have any queries you may contact ADS Recruitment Team via email ADSRecruitment@arts.ac.uk or telephone: 020 7514 2965