Basic Function

This competition seeks to recruit one Research Officer focussed on project coordination and management of a large Irish government funded research project, RESPONSE. A range of activities and tasks will be required of the Research Officer and these are outlined below

Background

This position will be based in Teagasc’s Environment, Soils and Land-use (ESLU) Department in Johnstown Castle, Wexford. Teagasc - Johnstown Castle, which is Ireland’s leading research institute on soils and environment related research and conducts both fundamental and applied research on a wide range of subjects, e.g. soil quality, water quality, hydrology, catchment science, gaseous emissions, agro-ecology, and land use change. The DAFM funded project called RESPONSE is a collaboration between Teagasc and other national and international researchers to deliver farmers and policy makers the applications and information as to where and when water quality will improve through on-farm actions. The four-year programme of work will focus on three core areas that will produce national scale models of water quality monitoring effectiveness, estimates of time lags between on-farm actions and catchment water quality response and applications to address key questions that, for example, will give farmers and policy makers the confidence to implement and reward actions to improve catchment water quality. The research will combine detailed catchment data (using the high-resolution monitoring data collected from the Agricultural Catchments Programme) with water quality and biophysical / management data from sites across Ireland (EPA and other data sources).

• Project management and co-ordination of the research project “RESPONSE” including time and resource management of multiple project objectives and deliverables between the ESLU department in Teagasc and external research partners in Ireland (and potentially overseas).
• The management and collation of large volumes of environmental data and the coordination of data collection activities, both of existing and novel datasets, with a focus on water chemistry, hydrology and hydrogeology.
• Further to the above task the post will require collaboration with other Irish government departments and agencies who hold environmental datasets, e.g., EPA, GSI etc.
• The post will not require any laboratory or field work per se but will require some supervision and management of postgraduate research students and other technical staff who are collecting and processing water chemistry data including environmental isotopes. Therefore, an understanding of how these tasks and processes are managed is important to the role
• To assist Teagasc in meeting the commitments of the Quality Customer Service Charter and Action Plan.
• To actively participate in the annual business planning and Performance Management Development System (PMDS) processes.
• Fully co-operate with the provisions made for ensuring the health, safety and welfare of themselves, fellow staff and non-Teagasc staff and co-operate with management in enabling Teagasc to comply with legal obligations. This includes full compliance with the responsibilities outlined in the Safety Statement.
• Any other duties as may be assigned from time to time

* This job specification is intended as a guide to the general range of duties and is intended to be neither definitive nor restrictive.  It will be reviewed from time to time with the post holder.

 Note:  The ‘essential’ qualifications, knowledge, skills and behavioural competencies outlined above are ‘must-have’ which will be used in the selection process.