Dear MARMAM-Users, We are pleased to announce the following position for a Postdoctoral Researcher. We welcome all applicants, however due to COVID travel restrictions, if you are not in Canada already, please check if you are able to obtain a work permit and travel provisions for Canada. The project Only 72 Southern Resident Killer Whale individuals remain as of February 2020, the population cannot risk any injuries or mortalities from ships that transit through their habitat. The goal is to automatically detect whale sounds from underwater acoustic signals so as to alert ships of their presence to reduce the risk of collisions. The research goals involve development of machine learning tools for under-water acoustic signals and extend into uncertainty quantification and sequential experimental design. A deep learning approach will be used to develop a whale detector from a catalog of labelled sounds from different killer whale types and ambient sounds. In order to validate and improve the whale detector, an active learning (human-in-the-loop) approach will be developed to prioritize new annotation tasks for the human analyst. The end result will be integrated into open-source software, including a plug-in for PAMGuard for use by people working in marine mammal acoustics. There is room for applied and methodological research. The team: Ruth Joy, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences and the School of Environmental Science, Simon Fraser University Dave Campbell, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University. Oliver Kirsebom, Marine Environmental Research Infrastructure for Data Integration and Application Network (MERIDIAN), Dalhousie University Fabio Frazao, Institute for Big Data Analytics, Dalhousie University *Steven Bergner*, Big Data Centre, Simon Fraser University *Scott Veirs*, Orcasound open-source software project What the supervisors are offering: The intent is to build your research program, boost your employability, and build your professional network, while saving the whales. This post-doctoral opening is designed to ensure collaborative and networking opportunities for the candidate. There is a clear target research project, but the candidate will have academic freedom to become involved in other research projects that align with their career goals. Opportunities to Build Academic Collaborations Across Canada: When travel becomes realistic once again, the project has funding for the candidate to spend collaborative time at Simon Fraser University, as well as Dalhousie University. We want to help you to develop career connections across Canada. While being hosted in Ottawa, the candidate will be introduced to a network of collaborators at government research labs such as the National Research Council of Canada and Department of Fisheries and Oceans, as well as other academic institutions. Details Salary: $65,000 per year plus travel. Project duration: 2 years Location: Carleton University, Ottawa but we understand the world is strange these days and needs some flexibility. Qualifications: - The candidate must have experience working with real data. - The candidate must have strong computing skills in R and/or python. - The candidate should have a skillset emphasizing computational statistics, statistical computing, and/or machine learning. - The candidate would ideally have interests / strengths in some of: statistical algorithms, high performance computing, audio signal processing, ecological modelling, computational statistics, state space modelling, Bayesian sampling algorithms, or hierarchical modelling. To Apply Send an email to: RuthJoy <rjoy@sfu.ca> and DaveCampbell <davecampbell@math.carleton.ca> With the subject “Postdoc: Save the Whales”, please include your potential start date in your cover letter. Deadline: July 15th, 2020, or until the position is filled. For any questions do not hesitate to contact me. Best regards, Ruth Joy.