This internship is hosted by the BC Centre for Disease Control, with funding from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.

Job description

The Research Assistant (RA) will work with Environmental Health Services (EHS) at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). The BCCDC’s mandate is to improve the public health of all British Columbians. EHS conducts applied research and surveillance of important environmental public health issues in the province. The RA will work within EHS to help develop methods to better understand harmful algal blooms in B.C. lakes.

Cyanobacteria blooms affect human, animal, and environmental health. Blooms are expected to increase with climate change and population growth.

The objective of this project is to develop/validate/improve models to detect blooms via satellite images. These models support research, early warning, predictive modeling, and ultimately exposure reduction. Initially, the RA will help develop bloom models and a RShiny dashboard to display these data for knowledge users. They will use their models to generate historical cyanobacteria timeseries to investigate spatial and temporal trends in relation to climate change and other drivers of blooms. The project will focus on model/dashboard development and will include an investigation and report on spatial and temporal cyanobacteria trends if time permits. The RA will collaborate with colleagues from the BC Ministry of Water Lands and Resource Stewardship (WLRS) under the supervision of senior scientific personnel at the BCCDC.

Qualifications

The successful candidate must:

• Have very strong data management and functional programming skills in R and/or Python.
• Have significant experience working with geospatial data with a strong focus on geographic information systems (GIS) in courses or in practice.
• Have the ability to work autonomously and creatively under the direction of staff scientists.

The successful candidate should:

• Have experience with data visualization and dashboard development, especially using RShiny.
• Have interest in pursuing graduate research education.

Deliverables

Deliverables may include (1) an improved cyanobacteria detection model, (2) an improved prototype RShiny dashboard for knowledge-users, and (3) a historical time series of cyanobacteria data. BCCDC has piloted this work and developed a proof-of-concept model and dashboard. However, the model needs to be further validated, improved, and expanded to more lakes in B.C. The proof of concept dashboard was primarily created for in-house model examination and a new one needs to be created for knowledge users.

Responsibilities

Starting with models already piloted by the BCCDC team, the RA will extend, validate, improve, and adapt the piloted models to more lakes across the province. The RA will further build the dashboard for knowledge users and will  generate a time series of cyanobacteria data. Time permitting, they will use the time series to investigate trends and changes in cyanobacteria over time and in relation to climate change.

Interested applicants can send their resumes to michael.lee@bccdc.ca