Consultant – Crop Modeler Data Analyst

About IRRI

Job Purpose

The IRRI Crop Modeling Team is recruiting a consultant to work on crop modeling and data collection and management, which will be supported by the CGIAR Initiative on Market Intelligence. She or He will be responsible for ensuring effective and timely execution of the tasks, which include but not limited to: 1) collecting information and data from research partners, collaborators, literature and secondary sources; 2) cleaning and organizing data into modeling inputs; 3) managing model simulations with ORYZA, DNDC, DSSAT, APSIM, CropSys, and other crop models; and 4) extracting simulation outputs into formation for exchange and further analyses, and 4) writing reports and drafting manuscript.

This position will be based at the IRRI Headquarters, Los Baños, Philippines and may only be filled by permanent citizens of the Philippines.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Use crop modeling techniques to quantify the effects of varietal traits and agronomic practices on indicators such as production, environment footprint, resource consumptions
• Establish the modeling framework and working procedure for efficient modeling process from data collection to the simulation output organization
• Build up the basic database of multiple crop at spatial scale for crop modeling to quantify the relative effects on indicators mentioned above
• Collaborate on various projects and initiatives, partners and collaborators for collecting essential data
• Contact and communicate with data owners to acquire more information as need, particularly the communication with corresponding authors of peer-reviewed papers where the potential data is help for the modeling study
• Take charge of the organization, storage, and management of collected datasets
• Ensure data integrity and security while facilitating easy access for analysis purposes
• Small piece of programs (in R or Python) to do data quality control, data conversion for model inputs, and for extraction and organization of simulation outputs
• Conduct simulations with multiple models to generate outputs over large spatial and temporal scales
• Organize simulation outputs into exchangeable data files

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Agricultural Economics, Environmental Economics, Environmental Sciences, Econometrics, or Data Science
• At least 1 to 5 years of combined experience in research activities on agricultural and crop modeling

Skills Required

Mandatory

• Strong educational background in agricultural and data analysis
• Good understanding and experience with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods tools for data collection, cleaning, and management
• Good experience, skills, and knowledge of crop modeling using one or more of ORYZA, DNDC, DSSAT, APSIM, or CropSys
• Proficiency in using R or Python to create program data download, cleaning and organization, data conversion to model inputs, and extraction and organization of model outputs
• Experience in GIS for dataset allocation, data collection, and result visualization
• Excellent interpersonal and organizational skills

Preferred

• Experienced already in ORYZA, DNDC and DSSA

Please note only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
This position will remain open until filled.