4 Professorships (all gender welcome) at the Center for Critical Computational Studies | C3S

13 Mar 2024
Job Information

Organisation/Company

Center for Critical Computational Studies

Research Field

Sociology » Other
Information science
Environmental science
Computer science
Physics » Computational physics

Researcher Profile

Recognised Researcher (R2)
Established Researcher (R3)

Country

Germany

Application Deadline

2 Apr 2024 - 23:59 (Europe/Berlin)

Type of Contract

Permanent

Job Status

Full-time

Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?

Not funded by an EU programme

Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?

Yes

Offer Description
Explorative Workshop | 25 to 27 June 2024, Frankfurt am Main

Goethe University Frankfurt am Main is one of Germany's prominent universities, and a founding member of German U15, the association of Germany's leading research universities. Goethe University thrives in the dynamic and cosmopolitan environment of Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region, acclaimed for its economic vitality and cultural diversity, and renowned for its eminent quality of life. This backdrop provides an ideal setting for academic pursuits, research innovation, intellectual exploration, and inspiring teaching. Covering a wide range of disciplines, Goethe University is committed to academic excellence, which is evident in our robust research programs, diverse range of disciplines, and a strong network of international collaborations.

Center for Critical Computational Studies | C3 S

C3 S, Goethe University’s latest initiative, epitomizes this ethos. As an innovation hub of inter- and transdisciplinary exploration, C3 S is dedicated to coupling diverse academic fields, encompassing computer sciences, natural and life science, and social sciences, as well as health, economics, law, and the humanities. This unique collaboration aims to define and foster Critical Computational Studies. Its aims are threefold: To deepen our understanding of complex systems through a critical-computational lens; to scrutinize the impact of computational technologies in shaping societal realities; and to craft strategies for the responsible design and utilization of these technologies, emphasizing sustainability, trustworthiness, and justifiability.

In line with this ambitious vision, C3 S invites applications for an explorative workshop (see below) from talented and visionary researchers who are keen to contribute to this venture. Ideal candidates possess a robust academic background, high-profile publications, a track record of cross-disciplinary collaborations, and a profound interest in the intersection of technological and normative approaches. Goethe University offers a stimulating academic environment, comprehensive support, and ample opportunities for research, teaching and transfer. Applicants will find in C3 S a platform to not only advance their research but also to influence the future trajectory of Critical Computational Studies. They will join a vibrant community of scholars committed to making a tangible impact in both academic circles and broader society.

4 Professorships (all gender welcome), open rank and open discipline

As part of our founding strategy and in our first round of recruitment, C3 S is seeking as soon as possible to fill the positions of

• Two professorships at the interface between classical network science and graph machine learning
• Two professorships for the modeling of climate change, namely:
  one for the modeling of the social and/or socio-economic drivers and impacts of ongoing climate change
  one for the modeling of ecosystems and/or biodiversity and their interrelation with ongoing climate change

The calls are open discipline and open rank (W1 to W2 Tenure Track; W2 to W3 Tenure Track; W3). For more information on these profiles, see below.

Explorative Workshop

In an explorative workshop from 25 to 27 June in Frankfurt am Main, we will invite candidates to showcase their expertise and crossdisciplinary interests in a dynamic, engaging, and collaborative environment. Neither your application for the workshop nor the workshop as such are part of the formal hiring process. The workshop will pave the way for this hiring process, which will be conducted by extraordinary selection committees (“Findungskommissionen” in German) pursuant to the Rules of Recruitment (“Berufungssatzung” in German) of Goethe University.

We invite applications for the workshop until 2 April 2024. You will hear back from us until 22 April 2024. We will cover travel and accommodation for invitees.

Goethe University

At Goethe University, we pride ourselves on being a family-friendly institution. We understand the challenges of balancing academic and family life, especially in the dynamic and demanding environment of academia. To support our staff and students in this regard, we offer a range of initiatives and services designed to facilitate a healthy work-life balance. These include flexible working arrangements, childcare facilities, and family support services. Additionally, we recognize the importance of supporting dual-career couples and have specific services to assist partners of newly appointed faculty in finding suitable employment opportunities in the region. Our goal is to create an inclusive and supportive environment where all members of the Goethe University community, regardless of their family situation, can thrive both professionally and personally.

Goethe University is steadfast in its commitment to fostering equal opportunities, embracing diversity, and ensuring inclusion in all its endeavors. We particularly encourage applications from qualified women and individuals with a background of migration, as we place significant emphasis on cultivating a family-friendly university work environment. Furthermore, candidates with severe disabilities, or those with equivalent status, will receive preferential consideration when qualifications are equal. This inclusive approach also extends to supporting women in fields where they are currently underrepresented, underscoring our dedication to promoting a balanced and diverse academic community.

Requirements

Research Field

Computer science » Modelling tools

Education Level

PhD or equivalent

Research Field

Environmental science » Global change

Education Level

PhD or equivalent

Research Field

Sociology » Socio-economic research

Education Level

PhD or equivalent

Skills/Qualifications

A large fraction of groups working at C3 S and its environment will require representing, analyzing, and modeling the structure and dynamics of complex social, scientific, and technological systems as networks or graphs. Therefore, foundational research on computational network analysis will be a core topic at the center with strong links to most of its application areas. C3 S is hence seeking to fill the positions (open discipline; and open rank: W1 to W2 Tenure Track; W2 to W3 Tenure Track; W3) of:

• Two professorships at the interface between classical network science and graph machine learning

Traditional measures in network science focus on the analysis and modeling of complex networks from the perspective of network structure, such as centrality measures, clustering coefficients, and motifs and graphlets, which have become basic tools for studying and understanding graphs. In comparison, deep learning models - especially graph convolutional networks (GCNs) - are particularly effective at integrating additional node features into graph structures via neighborhood aggregation and message passing, and have been shown to significantly improve the performances in a variety of learning tasks. While these two classes of methods have their own strengths and weaknesses, there are great benefits to be realized from a closer integration and awareness of the two research areas and their communities.

On the one hand, GCNs gracefully incorporate various rich data features, which are largely overlooked in traditional structural measures. On the other hand, traditional network science notions, being the foundations of understanding and characterizing complex networks, are also indispensable in studying GCNs.

With complementary backgrounds in either or both of the fields discussed above, the two newly established C3 S professorships will conduct edge-cutting collaborative research and teaching on the design and analysis of computational tools for identifying, explaining, and understanding the patterns in networks relevant for C3 S. This may include but is not limited to graph theory, network dynamics, community detection or causal inference in networks.

Ideal candidates for these professorships will possess a robust crossdisciplinary profile or interest, showcasing not only expertise within their specific domains but also a genuine openness to collaborative, crossdisciplinary work. While the primary focus is on researchers with a strong background in network science, computer science or mathematics, proven by a matching  PhD and high-ranking publications in the research areas described above, other degrees in suitable application areas are also welcome.
Envisioned research fields include but are not limited to:

• Mathematics of graph machine learning.
• Robustness and guaranteed performance, in particular dealing with noise, data bias and application specific challenges (e.g., in social/socio-ecological settings).
• Sustainability, in particular scalability, data and resource efficiency.
• Non-static graphs: dynamic, temporal, streaming settings.
• Random graphs and random processes.
• Dealing with higher-order structures such as motifs, graphlets, and simplicial complexes.

The Earth's life support systems, crucial for sustaining human civilization, are currently imperiled by complex and interconnected challenges manifesting at a planetary scale. In light of these profound threats, Goethe University is dedicated to comprehending the intricacies of this multifaceted crisis, which encompasses climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and societal upheavals. To effectively address these issues, Goethe University pioneers multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary research and teaching with a cross-cutting focus on ·Earth·Nature·Society·. Our key regional partners are the Senckenberg – Leibniz Institution for Biodiversity and Earth System Research, the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, the Leibniz Peace Research Institute, the Institute for Social-Ecological Research, the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, and Deutscher Wetterdienst.

Within C3 S, we are establishing a core research group that will be dedicated to analyzing and modeling coupled geophysical, ecological, and social/socio-economic aspects, especially drivers and impacts  of contemporary climate change. This research group, spearheaded by three newly appointed professorships, explores the complex interactions and tipping points inherent in these systems. While a separate professorship will be appointed to delve into the geophysical perspective of how tipping elements and their interactions threaten planetary stability under ongoing climate change, this call aims to fill the position (open discipline; and open rank: W1 to W2 Tenure Track; W2 to W3 Tenure Track; W3) of:

• Professorship for the modeling of the social and/or socio-economic drivers and impacts of ongoing climate change
• Professorship for the modeling of ecosystems and/or biodiversity and their interrelation with ongoing climate change

These professorships are integral to advancing our understanding of these interrelated challenges, calling for expertise that transcends disciplinary boundaries and contributes to interface modeling. The emphasis is on improving our capabilities to simulate the dynamics of social and/or socio-economic systems, ecosystems and biodiversity, and coupled human-environment interactions at various scales, from local to global.

The selected candidates will be at the forefront of leading research endeavors in both ecosystem/biodiversity and social/socio-economic modeling. The methodological focus will be on advancing sophisticated modeling techniques, ranging from agent-based and process-based mechanistic biophysical modelling to hybrid approaches coupling also from statistical and AI methods. Of particular interest is the proficiency in navigating complex model settings, encompassing multiscale simulations, and a keen understanding of data analysis and data assimilation techniques as well as the integration of multiple data types, and parameter estimation and optimization.

Ideal candidates for these professorships will possess a robust crossdisciplinary profile or interest, showcasing not only expertise within their specific domains but also a genuine openness to collaborative, crossdisciplinary work. They will demonstrate experience or a keen interest in integrating diverse aspects - ranging from physical and geological dimensions to biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics, and socio/socio-economic processes - into holistic models that address the polycrises of climate change, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution and their societal implications as a systemic planetary challenge. We envision development of crossdisciplinary models that not only forecast and comprehend complex feedback loops between environmental changes, changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services, and societal responses but also illuminate critical junctures where collective actions can bring about transformative changes.

Professorship for the modeling of the social and/or socio-economic drivers and impacts of ongoing climate change

In the pursuit of an ideal candidate for the professorship for the modeling of the social and/or socio-economic drivers and impacts of ongoing climate change, we are specifically seeking an individual adept at deploying innovative computational methodologies. The objective is to unravel the intricate dimensions of social, climate and nature interactions, thereby contributing significantly to our understanding of the challenges at hand.

At the core of these explorations is the strategic utilization of computational technologies to simulate and model social and/or socio-economic systems and how they interface with geophysical and ecological systems in a changing climate. The integration of social and socio-economic variables into climate, Earth system and climate impact models is pivotal for a nuanced comprehension and prediction of the multifaceted impacts of climate change on societies, cultures, political, legal and economic orders etc. A better understanding of drivers is necessary to successfully mitigate climate change. Notably, the considered models should transcend current standard approaches, explicitly accounting for nonlinear aspects of societal, socio-economical, and climate dynamics.

The methodology employed should encompass the development and refinement of models that advance our understanding of the intricate relationships between climate dynamics and human systems. This includes identifying and understanding social or socio-economic tipping points within the context of global environmental shifts. Proposals are invited from researchers who specialize in developing and building data-driven social/socio-ecological models, emphasizing perspectives of system resilience, sustainability, and encompassing insights from data, economic, and social sciences.

The focus lies on social and/or socio-economic dimensions of climate change modeling. Possible focal areas include, but are not limited to:

• Socio-ecological climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, exemplified by green infrastructure, urban planning, reforestation (nature-based solutions)  and carbon pricing.
• Eco-justice and eco-regulation, delving into uneven distributions of the causes and impacts of global warming.
• Eco-politics, exploring phenomena such as migration, war and conflict, and shifts in voting behavior induced by failures of Earth's life support systems.
• The nexus of climate change with social inequality, migration patterns, and evolving societal norms, elucidating intersections and influences.

Professorship for the modeling of ecosystems and/or biodiversity and their interrelation with ongoing climate change

For the professorship for the modeling of ecosystems and/or biodiversity and their interrelation with ongoing climate change, we are actively searching for a candidate possessing a robust background in modeling spatio-temporal dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystems under contemporary or future climate change, with a focus on how environmental shifts influence the structure and functioning of ecological communities, ecosystems and ecosystem services over time. The objective is to delve into the impacts of ongoing climate change and the changes invoked by human-nature interaction on these intricate systems. Particular attention should be paid to ecosystem and socio-ecological robustness, resilience and adaptive strategies, or their respective failures.

Research efforts should contribute to the refinement of climate adaptation and mitigation measures as well as conservation and ecosystem management strategies. This includes assessing the efficacy of habitat restoration initiatives, species reintroductions, re-vitalizing ecosystem resilience as well as various conservation and ecosystem management measures in the face of dynamic environmental challenges. The selected candidate will play an instrumental role in shaping a sustainable future by providing essential insights into the intricate dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystems in response to the multifaceted challenges posed by climate change and human-nature interaction.

Research and application areas for this professorship may include, but are not limited to:

• Exploration of how species' traits and genetic diversity evolve in response to environmental changes, elucidating subsequent impacts on ecosystem dynamics.
• Role of functional traits of species in response to climate change and impact on ecosystem processes.
• Predicting changes in species distributions due to climate change, incorporating physiological responses to temperature, humidity, and other environmental variables.
• Eco-evolutionary modeling of biodiversity dynamics and ecosystem functioning.
• Modeling interactions between climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution.
• Modeling feedback from biodiversity and ecosystem change on climate.
• Modeling trade-offs and synergies between biodiversity protection, climate mitigation, sustainability goals, and ecosystem services.

Additional Information
Work Location(s)

Number of offers available

4

Company/Institute

Center for Critical Computational Studies

Country

Germany

State/Province

Hessen

City

Frankfurt am Main

Postal Code

60322

Street

Eschersheimer Landstraße 121

Geofield

Where to apply

Website

https://www.c3s-frankfurt.de/workshop

Contact

State/Province

Hessen

City

Frankfurt am Main

Website

https://www.c3s-frankfurt.de

Street

Eschersheimer Landstraße 121

Postal Code

60322

E-Mail

[email protected]

Phone

+49 (69) 798 1233

STATUS: EXPIRED