PhD in Acoustic Monitoring of Small Delphinids

Applicants are invited for a PhD fellowship/scholarship at Graduate School of Technical Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark, within the Ecoscience programme. The position is available from 1 August 2024 or later. You can submit your application via the link under 'how to apply'.

Title:
PhD in Acoustic Monitoring of Small Delphinids

Research area and project description:
We are excited to offer a unique PhD opportunity dedicated to advancing techniques for acoustic detection and population monitoring of small delphinids. The candidate will work within a small and interdisciplinary team to develop and validate methods for detecting individual bottlenose dolphin signature whistles, uncover and catalogue signature whistles for new populations, and implement statistical analysis for mark-recapture estimates of population density.

The successful applicant will be based out of the Section for Marine Mammal Research in Roskilde but will be expected to collaborate with leading researchers at the Sarasota Dolphin Research Project in Florida, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and University of St. Andrews. The project will leverage an extensive, longitudinal dataset of dolphin vocalizations from known individuals, tag recordings for assessing changes and differences in vocal behavior over time, and a unique network of long-term listening stations for implementing and evaluating acoustic monitoring approaches.
The candidate is expected to contribute to analysis of long-term monitoring data from Denmark, and to work towards improving our ability to detect and monitor populations of small delphinids in Danish and European waters to understand and ultimately mitigate the impacts of human activities.

Project description (½-4 pages).
This document should describe your ideas and research plans for this project, in particular how you expect to fit into it and how it fits with your past research activities.

Qualifications and specific competences:
The Candidate must have a relevant Bachelor’s degree in biology, engineering, physics, computer science, or related fields. A completed Master’s degree is preferred. The duration of the PhD program will depend on the educational background of the chosen candidate.

The candidate must have demonstrated experience with bioacoustics, including experience with fieldwork and data collection, acoustic analysis, and processing of large datasets.

The candidate must be familiar with programming and data analysis in at least one programming language.

The candidate is expected to have good written and spoken English

The candidate must be keen on collaborating with a large team of international colleagues.

Additionally, it is beneficial that the candidate has any of the following experience:

• marine mammal bioacoustics
• passive acoustic monitoring tools (PAMguard)
• bioacoustic machine learning including supervised and/or unsupervised classification, model training, and model assessment
• database management
• fieldwork on small or large research vessels
• writing and publishing research papers

Place of employment and place of work:
The place of employment is Aarhus University, and the place of work is Section for marine mammal research, Aarhus University, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark

Contacts:
Applicants seeking further information are invited to contact:

• Frants Havmand Jensen, [email protected] (main supervisor)

How to apply:
Please follow this link to submit your application.
Application deadline is 1 June 2024 at 23:59 CEST.
Preferred starting date is 1 August 2024.
For information about application requirements and mandatory attachments, please see our application guide.
Please note:

• Only documents received prior to the application deadline will be evaluated. Thus, documents sent after deadline will not be taken into account.
• The programme committee may request further information or invite the applicant to attend an interview.
• Shortlisting will be used, which means that the evaluation committee only will evaluate the most relevant applications.

Aarhus University’s ambition is to be an attractive and inspiring workplace for all and to foster a culture in which each individual has opportunities to thrive, achieve and develop. We view equality and diversity as assets, and we welcome all applicants. All interested candidates are encouraged to apply, regardless of their personal background. Salary and terms of employment are in accordance with applicable collective agreement.