Open Postdoctoral position, faculty mentor Field Chris

The Climate and Energy Policy Program (CEPP) of Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment invite applications for a post-doctoral position focused on improving wildfire policy. This postdoc will join the thriving community of the Woods Institute in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.  The Fellow will report to the leaders of CEPP and will receive mentorship from an interdisciplinary team of faculty and researchers connecting scientific research with real-world decision making.
This full-time fellowship is crafted for early-career technical scholars with a strong interest in wildfire science and policy design and implementation. It offers a hands-on opportunity to apply your scientific skills and expertise to address urgent and intensifying wildfire policy challenges in California and the western US. This work will build on and deepen partnerships with policy stakeholders and Stanford’s long track record of engagement on wildfire policy in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C.
The Fellow will lead research and analysis to inform improved wildland fire management policy and performance measurement. Specifically, they will collaborate on research estimating the effects of wildland management interventions on key outcomes (e.g., on the likelihood of extreme wildfire events) and develop metrics for evaluating performance. We seek a postdoctoral scholar with strong data analysis and management skills (we prefer experience in R) and a strong background in statistical analysis, economics, and/or and machine learning. Ideally, this candidate will be proficient in causal inference and advanced econometrics, time-series analysis, and geographic information systems (GIS). A willingness to apply expertise to new policy-relevant questions is more important than deep, preexisting experience with wildfire policy.
The Fellow will also play a role in collaboration with other CEPP wildfire postdocs, fellows and the CEPP Directors in organizing and implementing a multidisciplinary Wildfire Policy Practicum in one quarter of Stanford’s academic year that creates opportunities for Stanford graduate students to conduct rigorous and timely analysis in support of the objectives outlined above. The Fellow will also engage with external policy partners and practicum “clients” to ensure that products are maximally relevant to active policy processes, engaging directly in such processes when appropriate.