Postdoctoral Scholar: Ecological Drivers of Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) Habitat Use

The UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, with the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies and NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center, seeks a postdoctoral scholar to lead a multidisciplinary study of the ecological drivers of habitat use by endangered southern resident killer whales. Using existing environmental DNA samples, oceanographic data and passive acoustic data, the scholar will expand bioinformatic approaches for eDNA metabarcoding and qPCR datasets, quantify fish prey community composition, map predator-prey distributions against oceanographic variables to inform recovery management, and develop a unified statistical detection model integrating eDNA concentrations, acoustic detection rates and visual sightings into a monitoring index for coastal continental-shelf waters.

The scholar is supervised by Kim Parsons (NOAA NWFSC) and Amy Van Cise (UW SAFS).

PhD or foreign equivalent in biology, molecular genetics, fisheries science, statistics or related disciplines; skills in molecular genetic and genomic techniques (DNA/RNA extraction, qPCR or ddPCR, NGS library preparation, Illumina sequencing) and analysis of large-scale datasets; U.S. citizenship, national or permanent-resident status and clearance to work at NOAA/PMEL are required.