The department of Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida seeks a postdoctoral researcher to work on theoretical models of disease transmission in wildlife for multi-host pathogens, with an emphasis on SARS-CoV-2. The postdoctoral researcher would join the lab of Dr. Andrew Kramer and work closely with a collaborative team including the lab of Dr. Barbara Han at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem studies, Dr. Michael Letko at WSU, and AI scientists at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. The candidate should have a background in ecological modeling, such as dynamical modeling of infectious diseases or theoretical modeling of ecological communities. The project objective is to develop models that explicitly include predator-prey and interspecific contact patterns at multiple trophic levels in the pathogen transmission process in order to determine how communities with different structures and species with different susceptibilities alter pathogen prevalence and persistence. The successful candidate will develop and implement novel theoretical models that can be informed by predictions of species susceptibility to future variants of SARS-CoV-2 and linked to spatial dynamics of wildlife species. Writing and publishing manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals is expected.

Start date: December 1st or soon after.

Closing date: Open until filled, application review begins October 24th.