We have a 3-year post doc position here to work on our “REDUS” project developing a new flexible MSE tool together with me and a full-time programmer. We advertised the position, had interviews, hired a candidate, and he signed a contract. Then he pulled out just before arriving. After a sufficiently long delay that the other candidates on our shortlist had all got other jobs, and we are left with nothing. So we have a fully funded position and a need to fill it rapidly. Either externally or from someone internal who would want to do this.
We are allowed to hire for up to six months without going through a formal interview process. Our plan is now to re-advertise the position, but to appoint someone as soon as they can start on a six month contract with no interview. Assuming they do well, they would obviously be in pole position to get the longer-term contract (although I can’t guarantee this).
So, the question is, can you suggest someone looking for this kind of work? Required skills would be population modelling (preferably fisheries) and interest in developing an MSE tool. Going to be written in R, so some R is needed – but there will be a programmer doing most of the coding, so it doesn’t need to be professional standard. More details of the project are here (http://redus.no/en/projects/redus/about-redus, the post doc is on WP 3), but the aim is to write a modular tool that can connect to a variety of external operating models (including multispecies ones) in order to be able to look at a wider variety of structural uncertainties. This means that whoever gets the job has a lot of flexibility in where to take things once the tool is built.