CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellowship in Spatial Analysis/Applied Statistics - Mineral Systems

Acknowledgement of Country

CSIRO acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land, sea and waters, of the area that we live and work on across Australia. We acknowledge their continuing connection to their culture and pay our respects to their Elders past and present. View our vision towards reconciliation

The Opportunity

• Do you have a PhD in Geophysics, Mathematical Geosciences, Geostatistics, Applied Statistics, or Applied Mathematics?
• Conduct research to progress our understanding of the controls on mineral systems
• Join the CSIRO Minerals Resources Team for this exciting postdoctoral opportunity centred around a close collaboration between CSIRO, Geoscience Australia and MinexCRC

CSIRO Early Research Career (CERC) Postdoctoral Fellowships provide opportunities to scientists and engineers who have completed their doctorate and have less than three years of relevant postdoctoral work experience. These fellowships aim to develop the next generation of future leaders of the innovation system.

The CERC Fellow will conduct research anticipated to be centred around developing and deploying state of the art statistical methods (informed from fields including Bayesian geophysical inversion, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and/or geostatistics) to enhance the predictive power of prospectivity mapping. This will require, for example, the integration of a wide range of geoscience datasets and the development of novel methods for feature extraction. The first phase of the project will focus on geophysical data and products, but will later shift towards exploring avenues to harness the information contained in geological, geochemical and geochronological datasets.

The position will also provide the CERC Fellow with an opportunity to establish collaborative links with Exploring for the Future. The Australian Government’s $225 million Exploring for the Future program led by Geoscience Australia (GA) is committed to supporting a strong economy, resilient society and sustainable environment for the benefit of Australians (https://www.ga.gov.au/eftf). At its heart, the program is about stimulating industry now to ensure a sustainable, long-term future for Australia through an improved understanding of the nation’s minerals, energy and groundwater resource potential. By gathering and analysing geological and geophysical data and making the results publicly available, the program supports regional development and informed decision making across Australia, resulting in jobs and growth. The delivery of pre-competitive geoscience datasets for resource exploration by government to the mineral exploration industry has been shown to support the discovery of economically significant mineralisation such as the Julimar Nickel-PGE project and the Lake Wells potash deposit, both of which are in Western Australia (http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/145195).

Your duties will include:

• Using state of the art statistical methods to quantify the predictive power of geological, geochemical and geophysical datasets for mapping mineral system potential.
• Developing and designing new tools, methods and workflows to identify and rank predictors of mineral system potential by examining the distribution of global and Australian mineral deposits.
• Identifying which prospectivity mapping relevant datasets are most valuable for scale reduction workflows and developing concepts to allow to use datasets at different scales.
• Playing a significant role in communicating research or technological results in internal and external forums and, where applicable, contributing to and/or generating scientific papers.Initiate and maintain collaborative relationships with researchers at GA, CSIRO and within MinExCRC.

Location: Black Mountain, Canberra, ACT and embedded onsite with Geoscience Australia for a minimum of 3 days per week

Salary: AU$89k - AU$98k plus up to 15.4% superannuation

Tenure: Specified term of 3 years

Reference: 84101

To be considered you will need:

• A doctorate (or will shortly satisfy the requirements of a PhD) in a relevant discipline area, such as Geophysics, Mathematical Geosciences, Geostatistics, Applied Statistics, or Applied Mathematics. Please note: To be eligible for this role you must have no more than 3 years (or full-time equivalent) of postdoctoral research experience.
• A passion for the development and implementation of complex mathematical concepts and algorithms for geoscientific inference.
• Demonstrated ability to work within a multidisciplinary and diverse research team, and the motivation and discipline to carry out independent research to achieve organisational goals.
• A capability to build and maintain effective working relationships with stakeholders from a range of backgrounds including industry, education, government and academia.
• High level written and oral communication skills with the ability to represent the research team effectively internally and externally, including the presentation of research outcomes at national and international conferences.
   

For full details about this role please view the Position Description

Eligibility

Appointment to this role is subject to provision of a national police check and may be subject to other security/medical/character requirements.

Flexible Working Arrangements

We work flexibly at CSIRO, offering a range of options for how, when and where you work. 

Diversity and Inclusion

We are working hard to recruit people representing the diversity across our society, and ensure that all our people feel supported to do their best work and feel empowered to let their ideas flourish. 

About CSIRO

At CSIRO Australia's national science agency, we solve the greatest challenges through innovative science and technology. We put the safety and wellbeing of our people above all else and earn trust everywhere because we only deal in facts. We collaborate widely and generously and deliver solutions with real impact. 

Join us and start creating tomorrow today!

How to Apply

Please apply on-line and provide a cover letter and CV that best demonstrate your motivation and ability to meet the requirements of this role.

Applications Close

2 August 2022, 11:00pm AEST