Postdoctoral Researcher - Health Impact Attribution (R2)
Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Climate: Past, Present & Future (CL)
Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI)
About BSC
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for EuroHPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries.
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We are particularly interested for this role in the strengths and lived experiences of women and underrepresented groups to help us avoid perpetuating biases and oversights in science and IT research. In instances of equal merit, the incorporation of the under-represented sex will be favoured.
We promote Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, fostering an environment where each and every one of us is appreciated for who we are, regardless of our differences.
If you consider that you do not meet all the requirements, we encourage you to continue applying for the job offer. We value diversity of experiences and skills, and you could bring unique perspectives to our team.
Context And Mission
Despite increasing awareness of climate change impacts on health, our ability to quantify the extent to which climate change is responsible for worsening health outcomes remains limited. Health impact attribution studies can provide essential input into policy-making processes by quantifying the climate change related health burden via causally linking greenhouse gas emissions to observed health outcomes. This is crucial to informing health risk assessments, public health interventions, financial investments, and communication strategies aimed at policymakers and the public.
The Global Health Resilience (GHR) group led by ICREA Research Professor Rachel Lowe at the BSC-CNS is seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to co-create innovate modelling tools for impact attribution of climate-related health risks. The selected candidate will work within the Wellcome Trust funded project TACTIC (HealTh ImpAct ToolkIt for Climate change attribution). The project will deliver a user-friendly and didactic digital toolkit comprising a series of resources tailored to the needs of policymakers, researchers and other professionals (public health, journalists, communication experts) to better comprehend, interpret and communicate findings and conduct new health impact attribution studies. Together with partners in South America, Africa and Europe, the successful candidate will co-devise new methodologies to fill knowledge gaps on important but rarely assessed climate change related health impacts (chronic kidney disease, mental and perinatal health, and climate-sensitive infectious diseases) and explore inequalities (e.g., age, sex and socioeconomic status) associated with climate change. The postdoctoral researcher will co-develop training materials (e.g., guidelines and hands-on tutorials with R code and example data) for different users (e.g., researchers, public health professionals) to learn how to combine historical counterfactual and future scenarios with epidemiological data and to apply the latest methodologies in health impact attribution. The candidate will work closely with the BSC Knowledge Integration team to co-develop health-impact stories to disseminate information generated in the project TACTIC to a broad audience, making the health impacts of climate change more tangible.
The GHR group conducts cutting-edge methodological research on disentangling the impacts of global environmental change on infectious disease risk and co-developing indicators and impact-based forecasting models to track historical disease risk patterns, generate predictions at sub-seasonal to decadal timescales, and conduct future scenario analyses in collaboration with public health, disaster risk management, and humanitarian agencies. This position presents an opportunity to work alongside a wide range of leading international climate and health scientists and practitioners delivering cutting-edge health impact attribution approaches to support decision-making, adaptation and mitigation planning, and allocation of loss and damage financing in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Europe, and worldwide.
Successful candidates will benefit from expert training and BSC-CNS staff benefits: international multidisciplinary scientific environment and advanced applied research training. We encourage applications from highly motivated candidates with demonstrated experience in impact modelling for public health and an interest in applied research in the context of climate and environmental change.
Key Duties
Co-design innovative methodologies for impact attribution of climate-related health risks
Harmonise multi-source, multi-scale climate, land-type, demographic, socio-economic, human movement and health datasets
Formulate statistical, machine learning and mathematical models to understand the impact of environmental change and socio-economic factors on infectious disease risk and health outcomes
Develop indicators to track the impact of climate change on multiple health outcomes
Contribute to the development of open-source modelling tools, e.g. R packages
Incorporate aspects of inequalities, inequities and injustices in quantitative research
Contribute to health impact stories and communication materials to disseminate research to a broad audience
Disseminate research outputs in peer-reviewed scientific papers and international conferences
Interact with scientists in the group, department, center and other institutions in Barcelona to enhance synergies
Engage with local communities, stakeholders and policy makers
Develop training materials and deliver training workshops to researchers, data managers and stakeholders
Support administrative duties of the group, including arranging meetings, taking minutes, writing deliverable and mission reports, maintaining Wiki/webpages, etc.
Contribute to proposals for competitive funding
Requirements
Education BSc and MSc in Epidemiology, Biology, Ecology, Meteorology, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Physics, Mathematics, Statistics (or equivalent) PhD in infectious disease epidemiology, environmental epidemiology, statistical, ecological or environmental modelling or related field Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience Experience in data management and statistical analyses Strong programming skills in a suitable language (e.g., R, Python) Experience with version control systems (e.g., git) Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, demonstrated in scientific publications and well documented repositories Ability to work in a collaborative professional environment within a transdisciplinary and international team Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience Fluency in English is essential. Proficiency in Spanish and other languages would be advantageous Experience with processing data from the field of climate and environmental sciences Experience with Bayesian modelling and spatial epidemiology Experience with machine learning methods and AI Experience with statistical downscaling and bias adjustments techniques Experience working with climate projections Experience harmonising various types of data (e.g., epidemiological, meteorological, environmental, mobility, hydrological) Experience with Linux environments and scripting languages (e.g., bash) Experience working with public health stakeholders and international agencies Knowledge of some of the following topics: infectious disease transmission modelling, human movement modelling, multi-model intercomparison experiments Competences Ability to work in a team and in a multi-cultural environment Problem-solving, proactive, result-oriented work attitude Excellent communication skills Ability to show initiative, prioritize tasks and meet deadlines Ability to learn and adapt to multiple programming languages easily Demonstrates kindness, empathy, and respectful communication in team interactions, fostering collaboration and a positive work environmentConditions
The position will be located at BSC within the Earth Sciences Department
We offer a full-time contract (37.5h/week), a good working environment, a highly stimulating environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure, flexible working hours, extensive training plan, restaurant tickets, private health insurance, support to the relocation procedures
Duration: Open-ended contract due to technical and scientific activities linked to the project and budget duration
Holidays: 23 paid vacation days plus 24th and 31st of December per our collective agreement
Salary: we offer a competitive salary commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate and according to the cost of living in Barcelona
Starting date: 1 Mar 2025
Applications procedure and process
All applications must be made through BSC website and contain:
A full CV in English including contact details
A Cover Letter with a statement of interest in English, including two contacts for further references – Applications without this document will not be considered
In accordance with the OTM-R principles, a gender-balanced recruitment panel is formed for every vacancy at the beginning of the process. After reviewing the content of the applications, the panel will start the interviews, with at least one technical and one administrative interview. A profile questionnaire as well as a technical exercise may be required during the process.
The panel will make a final decision and all candidates who had contacts with them will receive a feedback with details on the acceptance or rejection of their profile.
At BSC we are seeking continuous improvement in our recruitment processes, for any suggestions or feedback/complaints about our Recruitment Processes, please contact recruitment@bsc.es.
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Deadline
The vacancy will remain open until a suitable candidate has been hired. Applications will be regularly reviewed and potential candidates will be contacted.
OTM-R principles for selection processes
BSC-CNS is committed to the principles of the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers of the European Commission and the Open, Transparent and Merit-based Recruitment principles (OTM-R). This is applied for any potential candidate in all our processes, for example by creating gender-balanced recruitment panels and recognizing career breaks etc.
BSC-CNS is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We are pleased to consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or any other basis protected by applicable state or local law.
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