Postdoctoral Researcher in the WG Animal Behaviour and Welfare

Postdoctoral Researcher in the WG Animal Behaviour and Welfare

FBN - Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology

Dummerstorf, Germany

What to expect: 

The PostDoc will work in a cross-institutional project aimed at the development of an AI based tool to assess the welfare of pigs on-farm. By combining behavioral biology, bioacoustics, and AI technologies, vocalizations are classified and used as indicators of animal welfare. While the development of the AI tool will be done by our partners at the Fraunhofer IGD, the PostDoc is expected to run validation studies, generating annotated data and testing the implementation of the tool. They will liaise between Fraunhofer IGD and the FBN team to safeguard an efficient collaboration and communication between behavioural biologists and computer scientists.

The project is part of the KI-Tierwohl project, bringing together scientists from biomedical research, farm animal welfare research, AI, and social sciences. It offers a unique opportunity to work in a large multi-disciplinary research consortium and benefit from the networking activities amongst the partner institutes. Participation in the KI-Tierwohl Young Researchers Group is expected. 

What to bring:

• a doctoral degree in behavioural biology, life sciences or related fields.
• experience performing behavioural experiments, ideally with pigs or other farm animals
• a publication record appropriate for the current career stage
• knowledge of statistical methods, preferentially in R
• good organisational and communication skills
• willingness to work with pigs under on-farm conditions
• motivation to work as part of a team, but also self-sufficient when it comes to running experiments
• an affinity to AI technology (incl. machine learning, computer vision)
• (German) permit to perform animal experiments (equivalent to FELASA B or C) desirable
• previous experience in bioacoustics desirable
• very good English language skills
• German language skills or the willingness to acquire them desirable to enable communication with lab and farm personnel