Post-doctoral fellowship for support of the Collaborative Platform for CanESM (CP4C)

This is to invite applications from highly motivated PhDs for a postdoctoral position to work on the Collaborative Platform for CanESM (https://cp4c.gitlab.io). The CP4C brings together Canada’s academic community and federal scientists in Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), including the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma). It aims to make the Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM) usable by a broad research community. CanESM is a numerical Earth System Model that is used to carry out predictions of climate change and to advance fundamental understanding of climate dynamics and processes. CanESM is the federal Canadian contributor to the World Climate Research Program's Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), which, in turn, provides scientific input to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports and many applications in climate prediction.

This postdoctoral fellow will advance our work to make CanESM more portable and applicable on a range of advanced research computing platforms centred on the computing infrastructure of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC). The postdoctoral fellow will join an active and enthusiastic team of collaborators from across Canadian institutions who want to work with CanESM for research spanning a myriad of applications such as assessing the effects of anthropogenic aerosol forcing on climate, investigating the climate impact of efforts to mitigate climate change, evaluating earth system model performance against satellite earth observations, and exploring the fundamentals of climate dynamics and climate processes.

The successful candidate will be supervised by Dr. Paul Kushner in the Department of Physics on the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto (UofT) and will engage in serving the needs of the broad CP4C community across several Canadian institutions. The UofT’s St. George Campus is situated in downtown Toronto within a world-leading research-intensive setting and presents a welcoming, vibrant, and diverse city experience. The candidate will serve as a liaison between Canada’s academic community and ECCC/CCCma, where they will be embedded in the CanESM model development groups working in Toronto and in Victoria, British Columbia.

Responsibilities

  • A primary responsibility to port CanESM across several DRAC platforms, and then to test, optimize, build analysis tools for, and support scientific research with CanESM. This responsibility extends to user support, to the development of training materials and to organizing learning opportunities in the form of workshops and hackathons for the CP4C community. The candidate will engage with multiple federal research groups and university groups, including students, other postdoctoral fellows, and faculty that form this community.

  • A secondary responsibility to assist in other project-management aspects of the CP4C, including communications, outreach, and planning concerning the CP4C project.

  • A secondary responsibility to engage in research and scholarship with CanESM, either in a leadership role or in a support role.

Funding for this position will primarily be provided by Grants and Contributions funding through ECCC. CP4C funding is in place until March, 2028, providing a great opportunity for the candidate to advance scientifically and professionally. The initial appointment will be for one year, renewable up to the full duration of the CP4C project funding.

Qualifications

Candidates with a PhD degree (or international equivalent) in the physical, mathematical, and computer sciences, including climate and atmospheric science, physics, applied mathematics, computer science, software engineering, etc. are invited to apply. All applicants are expected to demonstrate experience and interest relevant to the project. Strong computational and communication skills, an ability to work independently, and excellent organizational skills are required. Other helpful attributes could include experience with high-performance computing environments, experience with climate science research, a background education spanning both computer and physical science, and experience using Earth system models or similar complex tools of scientific computing, including an interest in their structure, applicability, extension into new applications, and optimization. Training will be available in areas as needed, depending on the candidate’s background.

The selected candidate will join a broad and equitable group of researchers with a strong interest in promoting diversity in science and engineering. Accordingly, we welcome and encourage applications from all qualified persons of any gender, sexual orientation, persons with disability, and other underrepresented groups.

How to apply

To apply, please send a single pdf document containing 1) a one-page cover letter summarizing qualifications and experience relevant to the advertised position; 2) a CV listing education, past employment, training contributions, relevant computer programming/computer systems/computational analysis experience, and research contributions. Please include contact information of two references (academic and/or other employment-related); and 3) a one-page statement describing your interest in CP4C and possible directions for work within it. Please send these materials to Dr. Paul Kushner care of CP4C project manager Ms Catie Terrey (ca.terrey@mail.utoronto.ca).

Evaluation of applications will start on December 16, 2024 and will continue until the position is filled.