PhD Candidate (2 Positions): The Health, Agriculture & Climate Lab (HACLab) at Baylor University is seeking applications for two funded PhD positions starting in Fall 2026. These roles focus on spatiotemporal machine learning for climate-health applications, offering an exciting opportunity to work with large-scale datasets and innovative analytical techniques.
Designation
PhD Candidate (2 Positions)
Research Area
Spatiotemporal Machine Learning for Climate-Health Risk Prediction
Location
Waco, Texas, USA
Eligibility/Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Geography/GIS, Environmental Science, Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Public Health, or related field.
- Strong programming skills in Python and/or R, or a willingness to improve proficiency.
- Coursework or experience in Statistics/Machine Learning and Spatial Analysis/GIS.
- Evidence of careful, reproducible research (e.g., GitHub portfolio or well-documented code).
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with xarray/dask, netCDF/HDF5, GDAL, raster processing, or geodatabases.
- HPC experience (Linux, SLURM, job arrays, containerization via Docker/Apptainer) and/or GPU workflows.
- Familiarity with geostatistics, spatial econometrics, causal inference, or epidemiology.
- Experience with Remote Sensing (Sentinel/Landsat) and VR/XR development (Unity/Unreal).
- Peer-reviewed publications or substantial preprints.
Job Description
- Design and implement analyses in Python (e.g., xarray/dask, rasterio, geopandas) and R (sf, terra, tidymodels/caret).
- Build scalable workflows on HPC (e.g., SLURM, containers, GPU jobs).
- Collaborate on research teams connecting climate, health, and agricultural data with machine learning processes.
- Manage large spatiotemporal datasets, ensuring reproducibility (Git/GitHub).
- Prepare manuscripts, conference papers, and open/reusable code & data products.
- Mentor undergraduate research assistants and optionally contribute to VR/XR prototypes.
How to Apply
Interested candidates should email a single PDF titled: Lastname_Firstname_HACLab2026.pdf to erich_seamon@baylor.edu including:
- A cover letter (1–2 pages) detailing fit and research interests.
- A CV with links to code/data projects.
- One writing sample or first-authored code repository.
Please contact us through the above steps before formally applying to Baylor.
Last Date to Apply
Priority Deadline: December 1, 2025 (Rolling review thereafter until filled).
