Postdoc: Climate, human behaviour and dengue forecasting in Aemstelredamme, Nederland

In the NWO-funded FEEL project (Forecasting dengue Epidemics using Emotion and Language), for 8 months you will investigate whether emotions expressed in news and public social media can improve dengue forecasts alongside climate information. Based at VU Amsterdam’s Institute for Environmental Studies, you will help shape research connecting human behaviour, climate and health.

Your duties

• you develop and evaluate methods to derive indicators of human emotions from news and public social media you and integrate them with dengue surveillance records and climate data
• you build and validate forecasting models to test whether emotion indicators improve predictions beyond climate and past dengue incidence
• you assess the usefulness of these indicators across locations and lead times
• you prepare a scientific manuscript and document your methods and code for reproducible research

Requirements

• you have, or will have completed by the starting date, a PhD in climate science, environmental science, physics or a related quantitative discipline
• you have experience with statistical modelling of climate impacts, health outcomes or social vulnerability
• you have strong programming skills in Python or R and experience combining and analysing spatial and temporal datasets
• you are motivated to learn and apply text analysis and emotion detection methods, with previous experience welcome but not essential
• you can work independently and collaborate across disciplines, with strong written and spoken English

We realise that each individual brings a unique set of skills, expertise and mindset. Therefore we are happy to invite anyone who recognises themselves in the profile to apply, even if you do not meet all the requirements.

Contract terms

A challenging position in a socially engaged organisation. At VU Amsterdam, you contribute to education, research and service for a better world. And that is valuable. So in return for your efforts, we offer you:

• a salary of minimum € 3.706,00 (Scale 10) and maximum € 5.760,00 (Scale 10) gross per month, on a full-time basis. This is based on UFO profile Researcher 4. The exact salary depends on your education and experience.
• a position for at least 0.8 FTE for the project duration of 8 months.

We also offer you attractive fringe benefits and regulations. Some examples:

• a full-time 38-hour working week comes with a holiday leave entitlement of 232 hours per year. If you choose to work 40 hours, you have 96 extra holiday leave hours on an annual basis. For part-timers, this is calculated pro rata.
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• solid pension scheme (ABP)
• contribution to commuting expenses
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package