Research Associate position with Professor Ashwini Chhatre

I seek to recruit a motivated candidate for the position of Research Associate. The incumbent will work with other research associates, data scientists, post-doctoral fellows, and policy analysts as a team under my guidance and supervision. At ISB and in my research group, we value diversity in the workplace and especially encourage women and minority candidates to apply.

This is a research position in an academic setting. The incumbent will assist with ongoing research projects broadly focusing on forest governance, food and agriculture, climate change, and financial inclusion, with the objective of creating knowledge products for policy impact.

Qualifications

• At least a master’s degree in Public Policy, Economics, Political Science, Geography/GIScience, or related applied interdisciplinary field.
• Training and experience in quantitative analysis and facility with using software for data manipulation and analysis, with an emphasis on ability to use R, STATA, and/or Python.
• Strong evidence of analytical writing, including ability to produce short documents describing results of analysis or synthesis of research literature.
• 2-3 years of relevant work experience.
• Willingness to travel at short notice, interact with stakeholders (government officials, private sector representatives, civil society organizations, etc.), and manage assigned tasks with minimal supervision.

Desired skills

• Data compilation: Scraping data from websites or documents and compilation into usable formats for analysis.
• Database management: Linking different datasets, ensuring data quality, processing raw data into processed datasets for modelling and estimation.
• Spatial analysis: Compiling and processing data within a spatial framework, including extracting data from rasters, vectorization of attribute data, and visual representation in the form of maps.
• Synthesis: Literature search and review, summary, presentation, and analytical writing.
• Quantitative modelling: Econometric analysis for exploratory data analysis and causal estimation, including visualization and reporting.

Best match

You should consider yourself a good fit for this position if you want to pursue a PhD within two or three years and want to get research experience to enable you to prepare a strong application.
The empirical skills you develop as Research Associate at ISB will help you in building a competitive profile for admission to doctoral programs in public policy, environmental economics, sustainability science, and related interdisciplinary fields. Previous RAs working with me in this position have been admitted to PhD programmes at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Cornell University; University of Chicago; Michigan State University; University of Southern California; University of California, Santa Cruz; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Clark University; Copenhagen Business School; University of Colorado, Boulder; University College London; Washington State University, Vancouver; and University of Delaware.

Benefits

I will supervise and mentor the incumbent, who will get the opportunity to work on current and future research projects. In addition, the incumbent will be part of a vibrant BIPP community, consisting of multiple research associates, post-doctoral fellows, and policy analysts. The extended research community on both campuses includes several other Research Centres and Institutes covering a diverse range of domains.  

ISB is a research-intensive environment. The incumbent will interact with a range of resident and visiting faculty members along with the other research associates, research fellows, and policy analysts. The incumbent will have the opportunity to attend regular seminars by faculty members where research papers are presented and discussed. The RA group at ISB is a close-knit community and participates in the social and cultural life of the School. Salaries are competitive or better compared to similar positions in India.

Location: Hyderabad

Salary: Between 7-9 Lakhs CTC, based on qualifications, experience, and parity with other researchers in the team.

How to apply

Fill out this application at Research Associate position with Professor Ashwini Chhatre (jotform.com). You should be prepared with a cover letter describing your fit for the position, names and contact information of two references, and the latest CV. I will review applications on a rolling basis until the position is filled. Only candidates shortlisted for interviews will be contacted. I will only consider applications that are accompanied by both the cover letter and CV.