Position Title: PhD Graduate Fellow
Employer: International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Employment: Full-Time | Contract
Place of Work: Addis Ababa - Ethiopia
Posted date: 9 months ago
Deadline: Submission date is over
The position:
This fellowship is part of the IWMI’s Digital Innovations for Water Secure Africa project. This fellowship will involve the fellow collaborating with key stakeholders to enhance rainfall datasets by integrating diverse satellite and gauge data, focusing on multiple spatial and temporal scales. The fellow will also be responsible for validating the accuracy of these enhanced rainfall datasets in the Lake Tana sub-basin by utilizing independent rain gauge measurements. Furthermore, the fellow will create a Jupyter notebook to analyze rainfall patterns across various land uses, leveraging available land cover and rainfall products from the Digital Earth Africa (DEA) platform.
Digital Innovations for Water Secure Africa” (DIWASA, in short) is an IWMI flagship project with initial funding for 2020-2023 but a second phase extending till 2027. In the first phase, the project focused on two main components - Water Accounting (at selected basins and continental levels) and Water Resilience (information products for support managing flood and drought risks). This led to the development of multiple water data products and tools. The second phase of DIWASA aims to improve water security across scales (basin, country, and continental level) in Africa through improved availability, access, and application of water data, products, and tools. It focuses on working with stakeholders and Digital Earth Africa to enhance the use of water data, products, and tools to have a more significant impact on water security in Africa. The project primarily focuses on Ethiopia, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Zambia. It targets reaching out to up to five more countries, river basin organizations, and continental-level organizations through capacity development and training activities.
Our fellowship program provides a great opportunity for early careers (who are at the beginning or early stages of their career) to gain experience working with earth observation data and products to tackle real-world water challenges. The fellows will get an opportunity to work with a group of researchers with a strong background in remote sensing and hydrology. They will also collaborate with key stakeholders of the DIWASA project, including governmental ministries, universities, and research centers. The fellows will become members of the water accounting network that brings together thousands of experts who apply earth observation to solve water challenges in Africa.
Responsibilities:
- Integrate multi-source satellite and gauge data to improve remotely sensed rainfall datasets at multiple spatial and temporal scales.
- Validate the accuracy of the improved rainfall datasets in the Lake Tana sub-basin using independent rain gauge measurements.
- Develop a Jupyter notebook to analyse rainfall patterns over different land uses using the available land cover and rainfall products on the Digital Earth Africa (DEA) platform.
Requirements:
The ideal candidate should be
- Enrolled as a PhD candidate in an Ethiopian university.
- Registered for a PhD degree course in either water resources engineering, water resources management, hydrology or hydraulics.
- Experienced in the use of MS office, GIS, and python/R coding.
- Demonstrated skills in written and verbal communication in English.
Fellowship Duration: 6 months.
Terms of appointment and benefits: ILRI will offer a monthly stipend to cover living expenses in the project location, medical insurance, and cover research expenses. The fellow will be co-supervised by academic and IWMI supervisor(s) and receive various capacity development opportunities at ILRI.
