Senior Ecological Statistician

Job Description

Fixed term 12-month contract, 4 days per week Hutton Level 6 – Salary £44,434 (part time pro rata) Biomathematics & Statistics Scotland (BioSS) seeks to appoint a Senior Ecological Statistician on a fixed term contract for 12 months from 01/09/2026 – 31/08/2027. This will be maternity leave cover for an existing role. Candidates will have an interest in movement modelling and working on applied and methodological research relating to the impacts of offshore renewable energy on seabirds and marine mammals. BioSS is legally part of The James Hutton Institute, a member of the SEFARI (Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutes) collective, and offers a stimulating working environment, with 60 staff and students at four locations, collaborating on applications in offshore renewables, environmental science & ecology, plant & crop science, animal health & welfare, and human health & nutrition.

The UK Government recently launched its Clean Power Mission with a commitment to accelerating to net zero by delivering clean power by 2030, including 43-50 GW of offshore wind, and to restoring nature. In the power generation sector, progress in switching to renewable energy has accelerated in recent years, with renewables generating more electricity in the UK than fossil fuels since 2020. Legislation protecting the marine environment requires that offshore renewable energy devices are delivered in a sustainable manner. Offshore renewable developments have the potential to impact protected seabird and marine mammal populations, principally from collisions with turbine blades, displacement from important habitat, barrier effects to movement and noise disturbance.

The Offshore Renewables Team (OSR) in BioSS carries out quantitative research on the impacts of offshore renewable energy on seabirds and marine mammals in collaboration with the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) and many other organisations. This position offers the opportunity to work in a friendly, inclusive team (currently 11 staff + 3 PhD students) within three consortia on interesting and innovative long-term research projects, which have substantial statistical and software development components. This is an opportunity to be involved in developing statistical approaches using novel ecological data to solve real world problems relating to the impacts of offshore renewables on seabirds and contribute to an extensive research portfolio.

Project 1: OWEC / PrePARED Funded by the Offshore Wind Evidence and Change Programme (OWEC ), Predators and Prey Around Renewable Energy Devices (PrePARED ) is providing critical insight into cumulative effects from large scale developments for key species. Surveys are collecting concurrent data to characterise and quantify relationships between predators and prey in the context of a changing environment. Movement models have been developed using Hidden Markov Models, to investigate broad-scale interactions of GPS-tracked seabirds and their prey. These movement models characterise the role of prey in driving seabird behaviour across different species and will be developed further in the coming year to investigate the effect of offshore wind farms on these predator prey relationships. This role contributes in the following ways to the project:

• Lead an ongoing project task on movement modelling of seabirds, and conduct movement modelling analysis
• Write a paper on the analysis and submit this to a pre print server by 31/03/27
• Contribute as a co author to a complementary paper on spatial modelling
• Submit data products and outputs to the Marine Data Exchange, including writing metadata files using the MEDIN format
• Provide written quarterly updates and presentations to the project and funders
• Attend project-wide meetings
• Contribute to the two day end of project knowledge exchange Symposium in January 2027, aimed at external stakeholders
• Supervise level 5 statisticians working on the project
• Liaise with external collaborators

Project 2: BRAIDS Funded by the Scottish Government Offshore Wind Directorate, the Seabird Foraging and Avian Flu (BRAIDS) project is examining the effects of reductions in seabird populations due to the recent Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreak. We are continuing to develop Hidden Markov Models using seabird tracking data, along with spatial metrics of foraging to determine how foraging distributions and ranges may change within a hierarchy of different scales. Frameworks have been developed to consistently apply data processing and movement modelling across multiple species, colonies, years, and tag types, facilitating large-scale comparisons of seabird behaviour across different tasks within the project. Current work is focussed on the propagation of uncertainty across these models, and the incorporation of estimated behaviours into spatial modelling (and other analysis) frameworks to assess changes as a result of HPAI outbreaks. The research will be used to strengthen the evidence base for environmental impact assessments. This role contributes to the project in the following ways:

• Lead an ongoing project task on movement modelling, supervising a level 5 statistician in analysis and modelling
• Contribute to a task on spatial modelling, including developing statistical methodology
• Contribute to other project wide tasks, including collaborating with leads on tasks that are dependent on movement modelling outputs
• Lead BioSS contributions for cross project Hub meetings
• Contribute to reporting deliverables
• Co author at least one paper

Project 3: Forth and Tay Seabird GPS Tracking Project Funded by developers and working with UKCEH, the Forth and Tay Seabird GPS Tracking Project is investigating the potential impacts of offshore wind farm development on seabirds in this region. Work led by BioSS is producing behavioural classifications of seabirds (using Hidden Markov modelling) for input into a variety of project wide analyses aimed at assessing changes before, during and after wind farm construction as part of post consent monitoring. Methodological development work has been conducted to test, compare, and refine different model structures and data integrations to improve accuracy of the behavioural models. Ongoing work is around the delivery of behavioural classifications from new data as it becomes available, continued methodological development work on the integration of data across different data streams (e.g. GPS, time depth recorders), and the consolidation of project wide findings. This role contributes to the project in the following ways:

• BioSS Principal Investigator or co Investigator of the project
• Co develop and write an annual project proposal, budget, and liaise with funders and the administration team as required
• Project management including managing the BioSS project team
• Liaise with UKCEH to obtain the relevant data, and provide model outputs
• Undertake analysis and modelling
• Supervise a level 5 statistician with analysis and modelling
• Write an annual report for funders
• Liaise with the funders and revise the project report based on feedback

Line managing an Ecological Statistician

• Meet weekly to provide supervision
• Conduct annual performance review, and manage requests for annual leave etc. on JHI internal systems

Purpose of the post

• Lead tasks on large collaborative offshore renewables projects and lead smaller value projects to deliver research, providing statistical and quantitative expertise, with a focus on applications in movement ecology for marine systems.
• Leading tasks comprises of undertaking research, working with and supervising other scientists, collaborating with other members of the consortium who are involved in downstream tasks, and ensuring the task is delivered on time.
• Leading small projects comprises of liaising with project and finance teams to set a budget, input into the contract negotiations, attending project meetings to give updates, and ensuring that projects are appropriately resourced, coordinated and delivered.
• Provide line management and act in a supervisory role to Level 5 researchers who are undertaking the research for successfully awarded projects and contribute to revenue generation through completion of existing projects.
• Continue an established research portfolio in movement modelling methodology and applied statistics problems at the interface between statistics and marine ecology, motivated by quantitative problems encountered in collaborative projects.
• Actively engage in external citizenship, demonstrating leadership and motivation.
• Lead and support BioSS tendering in specific external income generation opportunities in marine ecological statistics, related to offshore renewables.

Main responsibilities of the post

• Responsible for BioSS deliverables in project consortia, including producing and delivering presentations, writing project reports, producing manuscripts for external peer review, and representing BioSS at internal and external meetings and conferences.
• Supervising other staff in project consortia, setting the direction of research and ensuring that deliverables are met.
• Work with other senior BioSS staff in tendering, including bids for external funding from the Scottish Government Marine Directorate and other government bodies, UKRI, and industry projects relating to the impacts of offshore renewable energy developments on seabirds and marine mammals, and on delivering the project(s) where successful.

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