Internship in Geographical Information System (GIS) applied to Urban health (f/m/d) - Ref: 24-02

The Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) is recruiting an intern in Geographical Information System (GIS) applied to Urban health (f/m/d)

•Ref: 24-02

•4-6 months full-time (40h/week) internship at LISER, Urban Development and Mobility Department (UDM)

•Foreseen start date: April-May 2024

•EU research framework program: Horizon ERC Starting Grant 101040492

LISER invites highly qualified and motivated applicants for an internship within the Urban Development and Mobility Department, under a project funded by the European Union, through Horizon European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant program.

About the FragMent project

Geographic environments, daily activities and stress: a study on the space-time fragmentation of exposure patterns.

Stress is nearly ubiquitous in everyday life, and act as a major risk factor of numerous mental and physical disorders. Exposures to daily environments may either act as a contributor to stress or provide some restorative qualities. For example, while greener environments reduce stress, higher built-up density and proximity to traffic do the reverse. Yet, the combination of these momentary effects on stress over a day have so far been largely ignored. This project investigate the environmental determinants of momentary, daily and chronic stress. 

Your Role

Participate in the creation of a Geographic Information System (GIS) to measure the environmental determinants of stress over space and time.

FragMent aims to assess the impact of urban environment on momentary, daily and chronic stress in daily life. To acheive this task, we will rely on a cohort study with geographic information on participant’s place of residence and daily mobility patterns (i.e., GPS tracks and regularly visited places). We aim to cross this information locational information with differents environmental information to measure the environmental exposure participant experience on a daily basis.   

To achieve this, you role is to create a GIS, that georefence numerous environmental layers relevant to stress. This includes - but is not limited to - the following elements: Greenness measures (i.e., green densities based on NDVI, tree cover density, green land use diversity, etc.), blue spaces, road morphology (connectivity, traffic, sidewalk width, etc.), amenities (type, density, diversity), landuse (type, mixity), building characteristics (height, spatial enclosure), etc.  

The successful candidate will be expected to contribute to the FragMent project as described above.

Supervision team

Dr. Olivier Klein is a Senior Researcher at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), department of Urban Development and Mobility. Dr. Klein is an urban geographer by training and research scientist at LISER. He studies daily mobility, particularly in cross-border areas, as well as active mobility and walkability in urban contexts. As part of ongoing projects, he is also developing research on societal impact evaluation for assessing projects on environmental education and implementation of new digital technologies. He has also a recognized expertise in GIS analytics, survey design, spatial modeling and geovisualization.

Dr. Camille Perchoux is a Research Associate at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), department of Urban Development and Mobility. Dr. Perchoux is a health geographer with a background in geography and a PhD in Public Health Epidemiology awarded in 2015 from Sorbonne University and the University of Montreal. Her research interests include the assessment of neighborhood effect on health at refined spatial and temporal scales, social and spatial inequalities in health, and longitudinal effects of environments on health. Her research involves the use interdisciplinary concepts, methods and tools from epidemiology, geography and transportation research including map-based questionnaires, GPS, (bio)sensors, mobile surveys and virtual reality technology. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the FragMent project.

Noémie Topalian, M.Sc., is a PhD candidate at LISER, currently leading the research effort on the environmental determinants of momentary and daily stress. She has a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from the National Institute of Applied Sciences of Rouen where she specialized in the analysis of complex data structures and artificial intelligence. Noémie has worked with cohort studies at LIH and has a great interest for epidemiology as well as digital health. She now wishes to put her knowledge to good use in the study of environmental determinants of health for the FragMent project.

Your Profile

–You are enrolled as a Master student in a relevant discipline such as geography, remote sensing, urban planning or other related disciplines ;

–You have advanced knowledge in GIS analytics and remote sensing ;

–You have solid skills related to data management ;

–You are fluent in English, knowledge in French, German or Luxembourgish is considered as an asset ;

–You demonstrate good organizational and communication skills ;

–You have the capacity to take initiatives, as well as a strong ability for teamwork. 

LISER particularly encourage female applicants to apply

Application process

Please submit your complete application (in English) via https://jobs.liser.lu/jobs by joining the following documents :

•Curriculum Vitae ;

•Letter of motivation (maximum 1 page) ;

•Copy of the last obtained diploma and transcripts (i.e., bachelor and master degree, or equivalent) ;

•Contact details of one referee (no recommendation letters).

Deadline for applications: February 18th, 2024

If you have any questions on the content of the work, please contact Dr. Camille Perchoux at [email protected] or Dr. Olivier Klein at [email protected] 

For administrative matters, please contact Mrs. Vanya Kirova at [email protected]  

About LISER

LISER is a publicly funded research institute located in Luxembourg, devoted to applied empirical research in the economic, social and spatial sciences. The institute is located on the new Belval campus in the south of Luxembourg (Cité des Sciences, Luxembourg), which hosts the University of Luxembourg and a substantial part of the country’s publicly funded research facilities, i.e. LISER, the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) cross-national data centre, the Luxembourg institutes of Health (LIH) and of Science and Technology (LIST).  

Interdisciplinarity is a key element for stimulating scientific innovation. Research at LISER addresses current and future societal challenges and delivers relevant and independent societal impact and policy advice both at the national and European levels. The institute attracts researchers from all over the world, and delivers high-level doctoral training. The institute‘s staff consists of about 200 employees, 110 of which are researchers active in the fields of economics, sociology, and geography. Information on research in Luxembourg is accessible via the national EURAXESS platform. 

LISER is an Equal Opportunity Employer