Senior Research Associate, Adirondack Fishery Research Program

The Adirondack Fishery Research Program investigates ecosystem processes in lakes and streams throughout the Adirondacks that influence coldwater fisheries – with a strong focus on salmonine fishes, including trout, char, and salmon.

Overview of Role

The Senior Research Associate will lead planning, conducting, and reporting original research on the ecology and management of fish populations in Adirondack ecosystems, as part of the Adirondack Fishery Research Program (AFRP) team. The mission of the AFRP is to inform fishery and environmental management to safeguard Adirondack aquatic ecosystems. This position serves as the primary liaison between the AFRP, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and a longstanding network of private cooperators. Our work builds upon nearly 75 years of fishery and ecological data, including decades of whole-lake manipulations (liming, fish stocking, invasive species control) coupled with long-term surveys of environmental conditions, fish populations, and angler catches.

Responsibilities:

Duties will include oversight of the Little Moose Field Station near Old Forge, New York. The field station encompasses an experimental fish hatchery, lab space, and temporary housing for AFRP staff and students. Our field operations run from mid-April through mid-November each year, and technical staff based in both Ithaca and Old Forge handle most day-to-day operations. This position could be based in either location, thereby offering scheduling flexibility to balance responsibilities in both places. Supervision of technical staff and summer interns will be expected, as well as effective collaboration with the AFRP Director and our dynamic team of postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and undergraduates. Service to Adirondack stakeholders through education and outreach efforts is also expected.

The Senior Research Associate will help to shape AFRP research priorities, lead analyses and publications, and mentor students and postdocs. In addition to assisting with reporting to funders, the position will entail contributing as co-PI or PI to new extramural grant proposals that partially support research expenses and staffing, including this position. The Senior Research Associate is the most visible member of the AFRP to many of our partners, hence maintaining and strengthening these relationships is a key role.

Additional Information:

There will be opportunities for the position to develop new research directions as well as analyzing historical data and archival samples. The AFPR team operates as a small but mighty collaborative, and our research agenda is responsive to the interests of state, federal, and private partners. Our recent work ranges from food web ecology to phenology and from biogeochemistry to invasion ecology, and we leverage long-term data by using 21st-century tools to test key hypotheses about the effects of environmental changes on aquatic ecosystem health and fishery outcomes. We seek a colleague who will be excited both to pursue synergistic environmental research and to work closely with stakeholders to translate findings into effective management interventions.

The position entails a full-time appointment with an initial one-year term, with subsequent reappointment contingent on availability of funding and satisfactory work performance. This is intended to be a long-term position that facilitates sustained research on environmental change and ensures continuity of relationships with partners. We especially encourage applicants who desire a stable position rather than a stepping stone. The Department of Natural Resources & the Environment at Cornell has a strong community of Senior Research Associates who are accorded comparable respect and visibility to tenure-stream faculty.

Required Qualifications:

• Ph.D. in fisheries science, aquatic ecology, limnology, or a related discipline
• At least 2 years of postdoctoral experience conducting empirical research on freshwater fisheries
• Evidence of ability to collaborate successfully with fellow researchers across disciplinary boundaries and the spectrum of professional development stages
• Evidence of ability to collaborate successfully with management agencies and other stakeholders in conducting and applying research results to practical challenges
• Experience building, maintaining, and analyzing large environmental datasets
• Evidence of ability to attract extramural research funding