Visiting Environmental Data Scientist

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Urbana (IL); On-site; USD 55,000 - 65,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Tuition waivers for employees

Job summary

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign invites applications for a Visiting Scientific Specialist in Environmental Sciences at the Illinois State Water Survey. The role develops novel research methods, real-time data integrations, and digitization of analog datasets to reveal new scientific narratives.

The position emphasizes data pipelines, AI tools, and groundwater modeling integration, with opportunities to present findings and teach others about machine learning and data analysis in

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in hydrology, geology, civil engineering, or related technical field.
• Experience writing programming scripts for data visualization and analysis.
• Experience with Git for version control.
• Familiarity with SQL for database queries.
• Familiarity with MODFLOW6, FloPy, and related groundwater modeling tools.
• Valid Driver's License.

Responsibilities

• Research Development – streamline data pipeline from database to hydrogeologic models and visualizations for participatory modeling.
• Develop software and services to share ISWS, ISGS, and other PRI datasets; build dashboards and backend APIs.
• Develop parallelization schema for pipelines from database to AWS buckets and Data Lakes.
• Explore AI integrations including CNNs, CMA-ES, and LLMs for long-term data analysis.
• Digitize dark data and enable AI-assisted querying and meta-analysis of historical datasets.
• Integrate data pipelines into groundwater modeling infrastructure (MODFLOW6 and FloPy).
• Research Dissemination and Teaching – present tools at conferences and seminars; develop teaching materials; serve as invited lecturer.
• Perform other duties to support the Survey, PRI, and the University.

Skills

Python for data analysis

Git / GitHub

SQL

Data visualization

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in hydrology/earth science

Bachelor's degree in computer science

Tools

FloPy

MODFLOW6

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

GitHub

Job description

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign invites applications for a Visiting Scientific Specialist in Environmental Sciences at the Illinois State Water Survey. The role develops novel research methods, real-time data integrations, and digitization of analog datasets to reveal new scientific narratives.

The position emphasizes data pipelines, AI tools, and groundwater modeling integration, with opportunities to present findings and teach others about machine learning and data analysis in