Postdoc Epidemiologist - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

Who are we?

Department of epidemiology and disease control, section for epidemiological methods.

We are a team with expertise in a wide range of methods in analytical epidemiology and cutting-edge expertise in the application of these in a disease surveillance context. Our focus is epidemiological analysis and tools that help us understand animal health data. Our team consists of employees from different countries and communication within the group is primarily in English. We have a large national and international network and are responsible for epidemiological assessments and reporting in animal health surveillance, preparedness, and outbreak prevention/control.

Responsibilities of the position

You will work as a postdoc in an international project to investigate control strategies for LA-MRSA in pigs (https://www.jpiamr.eu/projects/phage-ex/). Your responsibility will be to develop a disease spread model under the supervision of senior epidemiologists/modelers at SVA and AMR experts from partner institutes in the project. Parameters controlling disease transmission in the model will be determined by fitting to experimentally derived data collected during the project’s first year. This model will then be expanded to a herd-level model and used to estimate the impact of proposed bacteriophage therapy on the dynamics of LA-MRSA in a pig herd. In addition to the project, you will participate in routine tasks at SVA including summary and assessment of ongoing disease surveillance programmes, current disease outbreak data analysis and research and development in these areas. These tasks will mainly consist of data management, statistical modelling and epidemiological analysis of animal health data. You will both participate in teams that collaboratively solve problems or complete projects as well as coordinate and complete tasks and projects independently. You are also expected to contribute to other ongoing studies and project proposals for funding of new research and development.

Do you have the skills we need?

• You must have a PhD in quantitative/computational epidemiology, ecology, mathematics or in a related area as well as an experience and strong interest in disease spread modelling.
• You must have a strong and proven competence in the R programming language, and it is an asset to have experience in other languages especially C or C++.
• A degree in veterinary medicine or animal science is an asset.
• We are looking for someone with good interpersonal skills who likes to work in a group and can willingly share knowledge and support the team. Flexibility is also important as our work can be demanding and require you to adapt to new and changing tasks in the case of a disease outbreak. This requires a driven, responsible, and quality conscious individual.
• You need to be able to express yourself well in English, both orally and written.
• We will accommodate the position to how the successful applicant can complement and strengthen other employees at the department.

The position is a 2-year temporary employment.