Postdoctoral Research Associate - Tropical Forest Root-Soil interactions

Requisition Id 11985 

Overview: 

As a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science national laboratory, ORNL has an extraordinary 80-year history of solving the nation’s biggest problems. We have a dedicated and creative staff of over 6,000 people! Our vision for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) is to cultivate an environment and practices that foster diversity in ideas and in the people across the organization, as well as to ensure ORNL is recognized as a workplace of choice. These elements are critical for enabling the execution of ORNL’s broader mission to accelerate scientific discoveries and their translation into energy, environment, and security solutions for the nation.

 

The Ecosystem Processes group of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Environmental Sciences Division is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Associate with a passion for the natural world. The individual will be highly motivated to improve our understanding of the plant and soil properties governing nutrient acquisition in tropical forests.

 

ESD is an interdisciplinary research and development organization with more than 60 years of achievement in local, regional, national, and international environmental research. Our vision is to expand scientific knowledge and develop innovative strategies and technologies that will strengthen the nation’s leadership in creating solutions to help sustain the Earth’s natural resources. Our scientists conduct research, develop technology, and perform analyses to understand and assess responses of environmental systems at the environment-human interface and the consequences of alternative energy and environmental strategies.

 

Major Duties/Responsibilities: 

• You will be joining a diverse team of empirical and modeling ecosystem ecologists, working at the cutting edge of above-and-below-ground resource interactions. The role will involve the opportunity to travel and work with many world-class partner research groups.
• Tropical forests play a key role in the global carbon cycle, yet these systems experience intense competition for nutrients—among plants, microbes, and mineral surfaces—which governs their response to global change drivers. The incorporation of these dynamics into models is hampered by a lack of coordinated data on the plant and soil factors that govern plant nutrient acquisition in tropical forests. Working in the Ecosystem Processes group at ORNL (Advisor: Matt Craig) and the multi-lab Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment (NGEE) – Tropics, the postdoctoral research associate candidate will have an exciting new opportunity to refine our understanding of belowground interactions in tropical forests.
• The role will involve characterization of soil phosphorus sorption isotherms and root nutrient uptake kinetics.
• The successful candidate will have an opportunity to design new sampling campaigns that improve the representation of nutrient competition in the nutrient-enabled ELM-FATES model.
• Deliver ORNL’s mission by aligning behaviors, priorities, and interactions with our core values of Impact, Integrity, Teamwork, Safety, and Service. Promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility by fostering a respectful workplace – in how we treat one another, work together, and measure success.

 

Basic Qualifications:

• A PhD in ecology, botany, soil science, or a related field completed within the last 5 years
• Excellent written and oral communication
• Excellent inter-personal skills and a team player
• Willingness to travel on a regular basis
• A proven track record of high-quality publications
• Experience working safely and as a team in remote field environments
• Ability for working safely and independently in a lab setting
• Experience with chemical assays and/or analysis of environmental samples
• Programming skills in data analysis languages R and / or Python

 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Passion for understanding the natural world
• History of tropical forest research
• Experience performing standard soil and root biogeochemical analyses
• Experience or strong familiarity with large terrestrial ecosystem models
• Strong mathematical ability
• Excellent written and oral communication skills
• Motivated self-starter with the ability to work independently and to participate creatively in collaborative teams across the laboratory 
• Ability to function well in a fast-paced research environment, set priorities to accomplish multiple tasks within deadlines, and adapt to ever changing needs

 

Anticipated start in January 2024. Applicants cannot have received their Ph.D. more than five years pr