The Climate Risk Management Unit is looking for a doctoral student to advance its pre-normative research on standards for quality assessments of Earth Observation products. In support of Copernicus/GMES a newly developed model-based quality assurance framework is to be applied to the benchmarking of field validation protocols for Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) over land. Using validated Monte Carlo ray-tracing models the successful candidate will: - develop unbiased approaches assessing the quality of in situ measurement schemes for LAI, FAPAR and/or albedo. - assess and rank the performance of CEOS recommended field validation protocols for selected land ECVs. Qualifications: The ideal candidate should have a university degree giving access to doctoral studies in the fields of: remote sensing, applied mathematics, physics, environmental statistics, meteorology, environmental sciences, computer vision or science, astrophysics, and climate modelling (or a related field). Experience with topics like: radiation transfer modeling, remote sensing data analysis, environmental/atmospheric/physical modelling, metrology, computer graphics, laboratory/field measurements is an advantage. Programming experience (C and linux shell scripts) as well as skills with packages like IDL or Matlab or R is an asset. Good knowledge of spoken and written English is ideal. The knowledge of German, French or Italian would be an advantage. Relevant publications should be highlighted.
