The International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) is seeking a highly skilled Postdoctoral Fellow to join its team in Dubai. As a key member of our research team, you will contribute to the development of innovative tools to enhance the resilience of the UAE food system.

The READY project is a collaborative research program between ICBA, the University of Wollongong in Dubai, and the United Arab Emirates University. The project aims to examine the global drivers of change and assess their impact on the UAE food system.

The Postdoctoral Fellow will work closely with the project team to develop a set of innovation-driven tools that will enable the UAE food system to adapt to changing contexts, withstand sudden shocks, and recover from them. These tools may include a vulnerability assessment tool, a set of policies, an early warning system, and a roadmap towards strengthening the resilience of the UAE food system.

• Develop and test dynamic crop models to identify crop yield gap and water use for the United Arab Emirates.
• Provide crop model outputs to support assessing and developing key food value chain processing and infrastructure in the UAE.
• Contribute to the design of surveys and fieldwork.
• Examine issues related to food security and contribute to vulnerability mapping.
• Contribute to developing a correlation matrix and food security computer-based management tool.
• Contribute to developing scenarios that will represent potential futures that reach beyond classical trend analysis.
• Contribute to interpreting policy recommendations based on the results of scenario analysis.
• Contribute to developing policy briefs, presenting policy options and recommendations in view of the analysis being carried out.
• Take part in meetings, workshops, and conferences.
• Author papers for publications in refereed journals.
• Work with ICBA's partners including the private sector, national centers, universities for advancing innovations for food value chain.
• Assist in the creation of networks with regional, national, and international institutions and take part in those already in place and conduct collaborative research with stakeholders and network partners.

• Ph.D. in food security and food value chain.
• Experience in DSSAT, programming/coding in any of well-known coding languages: R, Python, JAVA, etc.
• At least two years of experience in food security research.
• A good publication record in indexed peer-reviewed journals.
• Fluency in written and spoken English.
• Experience working as a member of multidisciplinary teams.
• Ability to independently design and conduct research.
• Experience in food security and Gulf food value chain.
• Knowledge of food systems simulation models.
• Additional language skills, Arabic is desirable.
• Experience in database (SQL).
• Good experience in economic analysis, machine learning, and modeling.