Postdoctoral Position in Computational Social Science

The TUM Chair for International Relations (Prof. Dr. Tim Büthe) invites applications for a one-year postdoctoral research position in computational social science. The early-career researcher will contribute to building the CoronaNet Government Response Database in the context of PERISCOPE. The CoronaNet Research Project (https://www.coronanet-project.org) is an international research collaboration, led at TUM by Cindy Cheng and and Luca Messerchmidt, as equal co-PIs with Joan Barceló (NYU Abu Dhabi), Allison Spencer Hartnett (USC), and Robert Kubinec (NYU Abu Dhabi). Supported by more than 500 researchers around the world, CoronaNet aims to collect, analyze and  make publicly available data on government policies made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the type, targets, and timing of the policy (for more information, see: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0909-7). PERISCOPE is a new interdisciplinary collaboration of 32 universities and research institutions to identify, map, and analyze the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic – with the overarching goals to develop evidence-based solutions and guidance for policymakers and health authorities for how to mitigate the impact of this and future pandemics and epidemics. It is funded by a grant from the EU Horizon 2020 emergency funding action for research on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Your Responsibilities:
We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher who can help us with data pipeline management and statistical modeling of the CoronaNet Government Response Event Database. The postdoctoral researcher will be expected to take a leadership role in the project and to work closely with the CoronaNet PIs and the TUMbased PERISCOPE team to help build a high quality database of government responses to COVID-19, employing R tidy data management principles, Github for project administration, R Shiny for data visualization and statistical modeling for data dimension reduction and tracking of COVID-19 trends and impacts. The post-doc will also be expected to help co-author articles based on this project for publication.This position will be funded by the EU Horizon 2020 grant for the research consortium PERISCOPE and the candidate will need to relocate to Munich, Germany to accept to position.

Your Qualifications:

• Advanced degree (typically PhD/doctorate) with computational focus (disciplinary background is of secondary importance; esp. computer science or social science);
• Highly proficient in R;
• Experience or interest in R Shiny, Bayesian modeling with Stan, and/or other relevant languages (Javascript, CSS, etc) is desirable;
• Strong ability to communicate in spoken and written English (required);
• Ability to communicate in German valuable but not required (please indicate proficiency).

This is a 1-year (12 months) research-only position, at the Technical University of Munich, one of Germany's most highly ranked research universities (in residence). It is available starting 1 January 2021.
Remuneration will be in accordance with the German public service pay scale (collective agreement for state-level public servants, TV-L) at the E-13 level (100%).

How to Apply:
To apply, please send the following materials in a single email to ir-chair@hfp.tum.de:

• Cover letter, that details your experience with data management and statistical modeling in a research context. Please include your reasons for applying for this particular position and your ideal start date. If available, please include links to R code that demonstrate your technical capacities (e.g. links to git repositories or replication files);
• Current curriculum vitae (CV);
• Transcripts providing specific information about all of your university-level coursework and/or a list of courses that is informative about your substantive and methodological preparation, including the level at which each course was taken and the grade obtained;
• Contact information for at least two references who can attest to your research and technical abilities.

All applications received by 7 October 2020 are assured full consideration. For questions, please contact Dr. Cindy Cheng at cindy.cheng@hfp.tum.de.

We strongly support the TUM's diversity policy, which seeks to increase the number of women, people with disabilities, and members of other groups traditionally underrepresented in the academy. We therefore particularly encourage submissions from such applicants. As part of your application, you will provide personal data to the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Please take note of the TUM policy on collecting and processing personal data in the course of the application process pursuant to Art. 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union (GDPR) at https://portal.mytum.de/kompass/datenschutz/Bewerbung/. By submitting your application, you confirm to have read and understood the data protection policy.