Post-doctoral researcher
Post-doctoral researcher: sustainable and healthy food solutions: system dynamics and trade-offs
Contexte
École Normale Supérieure (ENS)
Founded in 1794, the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) is a higher education and research establishment whose activity covers most scientific and literary disciplines. An elite establishment which recruits the very best students in France and abroad, via the system of competitions and preparatory classes, but also by selection on application and interview, the ENS enjoys great international prestige through the quality of its students but also by the reputation of its research centers, in particular in mathematics, physics, biology, cognitive sciences, philosophy, and sciences of antiquity. The School has 37 joint research units.
The École Normale Supérieure is a member of PSL University (Paris Sciences et Lettres).
Recruits a Post-doctoral Researcher:
Department: Département de Géosciences de l’ENS.
Research Project: Sustainable and healthy food solutions: system dynamics and trade-offs
(FLORA – ERC Starting Grant number 101039402).
This postdoctoral research position is part of the FLORA project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Carole DALIN, in the Geosciences Department of the ENS, in the centre of Paris. The selected candidate will join the research team for up to 2 years and 8 months, collaborating with Dr Dalin and other doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in the project team, department and beyond, to answer the project’s first main research question:
“How far are current global food systems from environmental sustainability and health goals?”.
About the FLORA project:
Food systems are crucial to end hunger, but also to mitigate and adapt to climate change, to protect and restore biodiversity, to ensure human health and well-being, to end poverty, and to support sustainable communities. While hunger has receded, food systems are causing increasingly severe damage to our environment and health. The FLORA project will contribute to a transformation of global agri-food production, trade, and consumption necessary to achieve sustainable and healthy food systems.
The project will create essential evidence to identify and implement the shifts in practices and behaviours needed to effectively achieve this transformation, by (1) making a diagnosis of the integrated health and environmental outcomes of food systems globally, from the production and consumption perspectives, with innovative measures of sustainability, (2) identifying key threats and opportunities with system dynamics and complex network analyses, and (3) targeting and evaluating tailored solutions with an inter-disciplinary modelling framework.
The project will enable the identification of most effective, targeted solutions by considering trade-offs, synergies, and dynamics of key food systems components. Global in scope, it sets the ambitious goal to overcome barriers in current approaches by taking a systemic approach and establishing a robust, interdisciplinary framework supported by empirical advancements to tackle complex food systems challenges.
This innovative project builds on the PI’s excellent track record in leading interdisciplinary research focused on the global agri-food system and its environmental impacts.
Work Environment
The selected candidate will mainly interact with researchers and students from the two laboratories at the Department of Geosciences at ENS: Dynamic Meteorology Lab (LMD, link) and Geology Lab (LG ENS, link), as well as with the Centre on Environment and Society at ENS (CERES, link).
Both LMD and LG ENS labs are parts of the interdisciplinary research federation Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL, link); a unique place for scientific exchange at the intersection of many areas of expertise in environment.
The Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD) is a CNRS joint research unit, hosted by École polytechnique, École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and Sorbonne Université. LMD studies the climate and the environment for Earth and planetary atmospheres.
It is a leading international laboratory on the following themes:
Dynamic atmospheric processes for Earth and planetary atmospheres; Surface/atmosphere interactions (including land and ocean surfaces); Water cycle and clouds; Atmospheric composition, pollution and large-scale transport; Global and regional climate variability and change; Societal impacts (health and energy).
The Laboratoire de Géologie de l’ENS (LG ENS) is a joint research unit between the CNRS and ENS-PSL, founded in 1880. Built on a long tradition in Earth and Environmental Sciences, it houses research that covers a range of fields including – Geology, Geomorphology, and Hydrogeology – making it a privileged place for exchanges at thematic borders.
This project offers collaboration opportunities with the Surface and Reservoir team (link) of the LG ENS. It is a multidisciplinary team focusing on soils/subsoils and flows of material (erosion), carbon, and water. These themes are related to the atmosphere and climate, whether at time scales of (i) the paleoclimate, (ii) the meteorological event (erosion, landslide, flood, drought) or (iii) the coming century.
Description
Missions and activities
Main missions :
The key research objectives for the selected candidate are listed below, with some flexibility to explore further specific aspect(s) depending on the candidate’s skills and interests:
– developing and quantifying an integrated indicator of environmental sustainability and nutrition security of food worldwide, from the consumption and production perspectives, for a reference time period
– carrying out the extension of this indicator over time using emerging datasets
The first objective builds upon work from Dalin’s team covering impacts of crop and livestock production worldwide on climate change via greenhouse gas emissions; water stress via withdrawals from soil, surface water and groundwater for irrigation; and both aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity via the use of farming inputs (fertilisers) and land, respectively. This is done at a high spatial resolution of approximatively 10km x 10km across the globe (5arc min).
Here there is potential to expand this to cover fisheries including fish feed and their environmental impacts.
In addition, the selected candidate will use international food trade data to understand these impacts with a consumption based-perspective.
Finally, the selected candidate will use nutritional data and develop metrics to build the human health dimension of the indicator; considering the balance and adequacy of available nutrients for human consumption in countries’ food supply, food affordability and good accessibility.
The second objective will be to use emerging global spatial datasets available over time to extend the quantification of the indicator over 2 to 3 historical decades.
Main activities
Research : data collection and analysis, modelling, publishing results in high-quality peer-reviewed articles
Presenting results at scientific conferences
Attending the lab activities such as seminars and relevant workshops
Further information
Start Date : from January 2023 onwards
Work Location : 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France
Working hours :
37h30min working week; 49 days off per year
Partial remote working possible with prior approval
Conditions :
ENS Researcher contract up to 2 years 8 months
Compensation based on ENS salary scales and candidate’s experience; ENS employee benefits
Access to Resources of ENS and PSL University
Budget available for IT equipment and research activities
ENS is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse research community and we encourage applications by members of all underrepresented groups.
Please send any questions you have on the position to Carole Dalin
Selection process:
Please send an email by 2nd December 2022 to , with the subject «Application for FLORA Postdoc 1 – Your last Name » and the following attachments as PDF documents:
– your CV including research manuscripts or publications,
a statement of research interests and evidencing how you qualify for the project and position (see Skills/Qualifications section)
– name and contact information of three professional references.
Pre-selected candidates will be invited to an interview.
Compétences requises
Degree : Ph.D. in in any scientific or engineering discipline with a grounding in earth and environmental science, agriculture, hydrology, ecology or related field
Work experience : publication record in peer-reviewed scientific journals commensurate with career stage; quantitative and modelling research experience
Technical skills:
Essential
Computer programming (e.g. Matlab, R, Python)
Analysis of large (spatial) datasets
Knowledge of environmental science
Preferred
Environmental Impact Assessment (e.g. water resources, climate, biodiversity)
Analysis of large-scale agricultural and trade datasets
Experience with source control (GitHub)
Knowledge of food/nutrition security metrics
Behavioural skills:
Evidence of ability to work well in a team as well as independently
Commitment to a collegial and inclusive workplace
