Overview
Fairer Fields is a research organization that works to accelerate better agricultural practices for animals, people, and the world. We are currently:
- Researching the toxicology and environmental fate of different pesticides, with the goal of helping farmers choose practices that benefit both themselves and animals.
- Conducting research to identify promising new ways to help people and animals impacted by plant agriculture, especially in areas such as pollination services, biological control, and more.
We’re hiring a Research Fellow for a 1-year role to advance our understanding of how our planned programs may affect animal populations. The Research Fellow will develop mathematical models of perturbations to ecological communities, focusing primarily on insect populations. These models will primarily focus on effects to invertebrate populations.
A major objective of this work is to determine how predictable the ecological effects of our programs are. We want to know in what contexts models can reliably predict the direction and magnitude of population responses. This includes identifying which outcomes are robust to uncertainty in model structure and unmeasured quantities. These models will also support the development of empirical studies to validate these models, or improve the data informing them.
The Fellow will have unusual latitude to define the development of this work, and direct meaningful research funding toward questions important to advancing the science of ecological modeling in agricultural contexts.
Apply for this role here. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
About Fairer Fields
Fairer Fields works to address the impacts of plant agriculture on animal and human welfare. Our current focus is on moving US agriculture to insecticide use practices that produce better outcomes for farmers and animals. However, we also conduct and fund prioritization and scientific research on other topics, such as harvesting, pollination services, and biological control.
Fairer Fields is small: we have 6 staff, and we expect to remain under 15 total staff for the next year. We have a culture that fosters individual agency and accountability, with a high degree of focus on near-term, specific goals. As you progress through the hiring process, we’ll share more about the culture we’re working to build as an organization, and the working norms we follow.
About the Role
In the Research Fellow role, you’ll:
- Build mathematical models of perturbations to ecological communities, focusing primarily on the effects of insecticides on insect populations and agroecosystems.
- Conduct sensitivity analyses on models you build to help inform further empirical research.
- Meet with external experts to improve your understanding of the field, and to identify grantmaking opportunities for relevant research.
- Help run workshops with experts to advance the state of relevant ecological modeling and forecasting.
Fairer Fields runs coordinated research programs to develop approaches that benefit humans and animals in agroecosystems. This means that our research tends to be narrowly focused on specific research agendas and questions.
Additionally, this role will have relatively little opportunity to publish academically or publicly, and this position is likely not suited for candidates primarily interested in turning their research into public outputs — while much of our work might be adaptable for academic publication, our priority is on internal research. However, the role may eventually involve making significant academic grants, many of which might lead to published research.
About You
We’re open to many profiles and backgrounds for this role, but we expect academic experience in theoretical and community ecology will be especially relevant.
The ideal candidate has the following characteristics:
- Strong research experience in at least one of:
- Quantitative or theoretical ecology
- Community ecology
- Applied math or physics, especially complex systems
- Research experience in multiple of the following areas:
- Building and analyzing dynamic models of interacting populations.
- Experience applying perturbation theory to ecological networks (e.g. press and pulse perturbations)
- Fitting dynamic models to empirical data
- Experience quantifying and communicating uncertainty (e.g. sensitivity analysis, etc)
- Comfort with uncertainty and the ability to translate that uncertainty into models.
- We will not quickly resolve the biggest uncertainties this project faces. The ideal candidate will be comfortable with that and comfortable making calibrated, careful recommendations despite that uncertainty.
- A high degree of reasoning transparency in their writing.
- Our work depends on our ability to communicate transparently and clearly about our reasoning and confidence internally, so we’re looking for candidates able to communicate in this style.
- A willingness to explore open-ended questions, even if they might not lead to useful results.
- We expect that what we are doing is hard, and the next few years will be rife with disappointing outcomes and results. This work involves exploring open-ended, difficult questions, and requires being resilient to these disappointments when they arise.
- Comfort working in an environment that requires a high degree of autonomy, agency and personal accountability.
- Fairer Fields’ operating model and small size require staff who are comfortable managing their own time, and acting with a high degree of agency. We have minimal management and supervision internally — this means you’ll often be responsible for driving your own results.
- Comfort with moving quickly when necessary, and working on ambitious goals.
- We work in a highly goal-driven manner, often on fairly quick turnaround times — the ideal candidate will work well under these constraints.
- A high degree of conscientiousness and carefulness in research.
- We’re trying to do something quite difficult with our work. This requires being careful and ensuring we meet a high quality bar.
- Experience with the following are beneficial but not required:
- Modeling invertebrate populations
- Experience in agroecosystems, especially in pest resurgence or secondary pest outbreaks
- Experience with ecotoxicological effect models
- Experience with nonlinear dynamics, chaotic systems, or ecological forecasting
- Experience modeling demographic quantities outside abundance, especially for insects (e.g. mortality flows, individual lifespans, population turnover, etc).
- While we don’t require a PhD, we expect that strong candidates will have at least PhD-equivalent research skills.
Finding someone with all of these traits is ideal, but we will consider all candidates with relevant backgrounds. If you think you might be a good fit but don’t have all our ideal characteristics, we encourage you to apply regardless.
Other Details
- Time Commitment: Full-time, 1-year fixed-term agreement with the possibility of extension.
- Location: Remote, anywhere in the US, with a preference for staff based in the Washington, DC area.
- We may be able to offer visa sponsorship for exceptional candidates.
- Salary: $79,000 to $92,000 per year
- Benefits:
- Flexible vacation time
- 4% employer 401(k) contribution
- Health insurance with employee premiums covered
- Travel: Required 2-3 times per year to attend events and relevant conferences, with opportunity for further travel.
Hiring Process
- Submit an application.
- Qualified applicants will be invited to a 30-minute screening interview.
- Finalists will be invited to a 1-day paid work trial, which consists of further interviews and paid tasks similar to those you’d do in your work, along with a reference check.
We’re aiming to give all candidates an update on their application in no more than 1 week.
We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status.