Staff Research Associate 3

Department Summary

The UCLA Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering (JIFRESSE) is a scientific collaboration between UCLA and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to improve understanding and to develop future projections about global climate change and its effect on regional climates and environments. The Institute brings together the research, education and training resources of two of Southern California's premiere research and technology organizations to advance knowledge and monitor global warming and climate change in our State.

Position Summary

Under general supervision of the Principal Investigator, Staff Research Associate serves as the lead researcher and independently conducts research projects to investigate projections of sea-level change from melting of polar ice caps. SRA will perform a variety of tasks including maintenance of the ISSM (Ice Sheet and Sea Level Model, http://issm.jpl.nasa.gov) framework, deployment of ISSM towards modeling of polar ice caps and their dynamic evolution, uncertainty quantification of processes involved in the barystatic change of sea-level in the next 200 years, as well as validation and processing of all model outputs resulting from such simulations.

SRA will also carry out improvements to ISSM (under the supervision/guidance of the PI) to increase the speed at which the runs are carried out, with the ultimate goal of rendering uncertainty quantification efforts possible within the framework of climate models. SRA will interface with PI projects that distribute ISSM results across the modeling community and to boundary organizations in charge of mitigation/adaptation for sea-level change at the coastline. SRA will be cognizant of technological breakthrough/advances in parallel computing, cloud computing, GPU computing, as well as Python/Matlab/Julia and C/Fortran/C++ numerical codes.

Cognizance of the ISSM modeling framework is a strong plus. Approaches including Machine Learning will be required also to drive improvements in the modeling pipelines and data outputs for ISSM simulations. Data science degree is a plus.

Salary & Compensation

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Qualifications

1 Year Experience in working with scientists in modeling frameworks and maintenance/deployment thereof (Required) Experience in maintaining and developing numerical modeling frameworks (Required) Experience with Python/Matlab/Julia and C/C++ Mex/DLL APIS (Required) Experience in running parallel numerical models involving the MPI paradigm (Required) Familiarity with Cloud/GPU computing required (Required) Strong knowledge of data science approaches such as machine learning (Required) Experience with continuous integration and active software development (Required) Strong experience in a numerical framework for climate applications, such as Global Climate Model and any module thereof (Preferred) Strong knowledge of data pipelines for large datasets, input/output to the Cloud/HPC (Preferred) Strong reading/writing skills and experience publishing science papers. (Required) Strong communication skills (Required)

Education, Licenses, Certifications & Personal Affiliations

Master's Degree Computer Science/Applied Math/Numerical Method/Data Science or equivalent experience/training (Required)

Special Conditions for Employment

Background Check: Continued employment is contingent upon the completion of a satisfactory background investigation.

Live Scan Background Check: A Live Scan background check must be completed prior to the start of employment. E-Verify Check: The position is funded by federal contracts/subcontracts requiring UCLA to notify job applicants that an E-Verify check will be conducted and the successful candidate(s) must pass the E-Verify check.

Schedule

8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Union/Policy Covered

RX-Research Support Professionals

Complete Position Description

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