tenured research position with ABC skills!

I just received this announcement for the opening of a (tenured/civil servant) position in the national research institute in biostatistics, genetics, and agronomy, INRA:

Position opening with profile Approximate inference techniques in complex systems

Key activities and required skills: You will develop methodological research in the field of statistical inference for models used in environmental sciences. These inference techniques will account for the complex dependency structure due to the temporal, spatial and evolutionary organisation of the observations, for the heterogeneity of the data and for the existence of unobserved variables or incomplete data. Solid experience in statistical modelling of complex data (graphic models, multi-scale spatio-temporal data) and a strong orientation towards the applications in environment and biology would be appreciated. Skills in approximation techniques (variational inference, ABC techniques) will be welcome.

Contact person: Stéphane Robin (robin [chez] agroparistech [lepoint] fr)

Location:  Versailles-Grignon (Paris)

Deadline: February 25, 2012

Website: INRA offer

This should appeal to (some) readers of the blog, esp. since the offer has no nationality constraint.

Bayesian job in Cambridge

Here is an email that could appeal to some readers:

Job in Cambridge MRC-BSU – Bayesian statistician
Career development fellow
MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge

We are offering an exciting opportunity to work on Bayesian models for infectious disease dynamics. A statistician is required to contribute to a programme of research to develop inferential approaches to estimation and prediction of epidemic evolution when relevant information, possibly from diverse sources, arrives at regular intervals, and, likely, in real time. Examples include the monitoring and prediction of long standing epidemics such as HIV, as well as new emerging epidemics (e.g. Swine Flu). Challenges include the need to synthesise heterogeneous and biased information to produce timely updates of epidemic evolution. You will have a PhD in statistics, or a relevant discipline; computing experience, both of statistical packages (e.g. R) and programming languages (e.g. C, C++); and experience of Bayesian statistics. Experience of Bayesian computation (e.g. MCMC) and of Bayesian inference for disease transmission would be advantageous. You must have good communication skills and be able to contribute substantially to writing scientific papers. Starting salary will be in the range of £26,022 – £28,764 per annum.

Applications are handled by the RCUK Shared Services Centre; to apply please visit our job board to view the full job description and person requirements and complete an online application quoting reference IRC18709. If you are unable to apply online please contact us on 01793 867003.

Closing date: 11th May 2011 Interview date: 25th May 2011