UCAR Visiting Scientist Program
1999 NOAA/EPA Graduate Research Assistants Program in Applied Object-Oriented Ecological/Hydrological Modeling
Principal Investigator: David Stotts
Funding Agency: UCAR (Indirect NOAA/EPA)
Agency Number: N/A
Abstract
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) announces a new NOAA/EPA graduate research assistant program in Applied Object-Oriented Ecological/Hydrological Modeling. UCAR manages this NOAA/EPA-sponsored program, which pairs graduate students, the student's home institution, and scientists at EPA's National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Graduate Research Assistants will work with their thesis advisors and experienced agency scientists in an area of mutual interest. The objective of this program is to help create a pool of researchers needed for object-oriented model design and development of multi-discipline ecological/hydrological models. The program endeavors to attract graduate students in computer science with interest and science background of relevance to the NOAA/EPA applied ecological/hydrological modeling development programs.
The Graduate Research Assistant will be responsible for the object-oriented design and development of multi-discipline ecological/hydrological models required for watershed management studies. The Graduate Research Assistant will be responsible for design and prototype testing of an object-oriented problem solving environment required to build, prepare required scale-dependent inputs and parameterizations, and execute ecological/hydrological models for user specified geographic domains and problem endpoints. Knowledge of general architectural design principles, design patterns, and object-oriented analysis, design, and development methods is required. Familiarity with specific client-server architectures such as Common object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Open Database Connectivity standards (ODBC) would be helpful, but is not required.
Candidates should have a BS degree in computer science with course work in biology, ecology, soil science, geology, geography, meteorology, climatology or other physical science in which terrestrial and/or aquatic processes were a major focus. The candidate should have a demonstrated capability in object-oriented design and object-oriented programming with proficiency in at least one object-oriented programming language such as C++, Eiffel, JAVA, etc.). Some familiarity with the Universal Modeling Language (UML), Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and FORTRAN would also be useful, but are not required. They should have good English communication skills and a demonstrated ability to write. The candidate will be expected to function in a cooperative research mode and so a demonstrated ability to perform independent research with minimal direct supervision would be helpful as well as ability to work within a team.
The program offers two to three year appointments, reviewed annually.