Application Deadline: February 21, 2025
Three prestigious interdisciplinary Hutchinson Postdoctoral Fellowships are available at Yale to join the Ecosystems Finance and Health initiative (EFH) for a project on “Rethinking how we design and finance solutions to environmentally-mediated infectious diseases in Africa.” They are inviting applications for PhDs in economics, finance, public health, ecology, statistics & data science or related fields to fill these positions. The three postdoctoral fellows will work as part of a research cluster, including faculty from across the Yale campus, to develop independent research at the nexus of public health, ecology, sustainability, economics and finance.
Postdocs will be mentored by faculty across schools and disciplines at Yale, which include Professors Serap Aksoy (Yale School of Public Health), Vanessa Ezenwa (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology), Eli Fenichel (Yale School of the Environment), Stefano Giglio (Yale School of Management), James Hassell (Yale School of Public Health), and Albert Ko (Yale School of Public Health). Positions will involve substantial quantitative data work and travel to work with EFH collaborators in East Africa. Along with collaborations with Yale faculty, successful candidates will be expected to collaborate with other scholars in the EFH network, including in the U.S., Europe, and Africa.
Successful scholars will also be enrolled as “EFH Innovation Fellows”, enabling them to join a larger network of African, US and European collaborators who are working towards a common goal of understanding the implications of climate change and ecological degradation on people’s health and well-being. This will enable them to take part in monthly virtual professional development activities, and at least one, in-person workshop in Africa.
Possible research topics include (but are not limited to):
- Synthesizing data to examine the theoretical basis and causal evidence base for ongoing or proposed interventions to mitigate environmentally-mediated infectious diseases in Africa, and working within the context of different case studies, identify strategies that would deliver net health, environmental and sustainability benefits.
- Investigating different socio-economic and institutional characteristics of institutional and physical landscapes that shape environmentally-mediated infectious disease risk in Africa, with the goal of developing a theoretical framework that identifies conditions such as data constraints, institutions, governance and financial structures necessary for scaling interventions.
- Using survey and administrative data, project reports, and case studies to analyze the exposure of different financial institutions in Africa to environmentally-mediated infectious disease risks, and the dependencies and impacts of their lending/borrowing/investment practices on the proximal drivers or mitigators of these risks (such as water security, biodiversity loss, and food systems).
Eligibility
- PhD in relevant field expected before August 2025. Relevant fields include economics, finance, mathematical or statistical ecology, statistics and data science, disease ecology, epidemiology, public health, quantitative social science or similar.
- Knowledge of causal inference and strong skills with large data sets.
- Strong programming capabilities. Our group is working mostly in R and Python (but also uses Stata, Matlab, Mathematica, C++).
- Knowledge of, or interest in, interdisciplinary systems involving ecological, epidemiological, financial, and economic systems.
- Strong English language writing and communication skills.
- Cross-cultural collaboration skills.
Application Details
- A one page cover letter describing interests and skills as related to the job description
- A CV
- A link to a public code repository or a one-page description of a computational/quantitative research project applicants have engaged in outside of a class
- Contact information for three references
- For economics/finance applicants: a link to job Market Paper or other writing sample.
- For all other applicants: a link to a published journal article
