Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Kastanienbaum, Switzerland.
Eawag is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to investigate how climate warming will affect the timing, biomass, and nutritional quality of emerging aquatic insects in alpine streams across the Swiss Alps, and the potential implications for riparian bird populations.
The successful candidate will develop fine-scale stream water temperature models, predict future changes in aquatic insect emergence, and examine potential mismatches between insect and bird phenology. The two-year position involves collaboration with researchers at ETH Zürich and the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) in Davos.
The Food Web Ecophysiology group studies how nutrients and contaminants move through animals, within food webs, and across ecosystems boundaries and how global changes like land use and climate change alter such processes. The goal of the current project is to model how climate warming will shift the phenology, biomass, and nutritional quality of emergent aquatic insects across alpine streams and to compare predicted shifts in insect phenology with rates of phenological advancement in riparian birds.
The goals of the postdoc project are to 1) model fine-scale stream water temperatures across the Swiss alps, including testing modeled predictions with empirical stream temperature datasets; 2) use predictive stream temperature models to estimate future fluxes of emergent aquatic insects from alpine streams based on empirical phenological data; and 3) compare predicted shifts in emergent aquatic insect phenology, biomass, and nutritional quality with observed rates of phenological advancement in alpine riparian birds.
The position will be within the Department of Fish Ecology and Evolution, located on the shores of Lake Lucerne in Kastanienbaum, Switzerland, and will also work closely with researchers based jointly at ETH Zürich in the department of Environmental Systems Science (USYS) and at the SLF in Davos, Switzerland.
The successful candidate can work independently as well as part of a small team, being self-motivated when it comes to developing new skills or exploring new topics, and having a resilient, growth-based mindset. Experience working with time series data, ideally phenology and/or climate datasets, is a must and experience using hydrological models, such as data-driven or process-based streamflow or water temperature models is an asset. You also need excellent communication skills and comfort in working with researchers across disciplines like ecology, hydrology, and climate science. You will work closely with multiple PhD students including working with newly collected empirical datasets and newly developed stream temperature models. Interest in mentoring additional junior researchers, including master’s students, is also a plus. The lab and departmental working languages are English, but interest in learning and/or knowledge of a Swiss national language would be helpful for fieldwork and outreach.
Evaluation of applications starts 2 November 2026 and continues until the position is filled. The start date is flexible but ideally you would begin by spring 2027 for a duration of two years. Your application should include a letter of motivation, CV, the names and email addresses of two references, and a pdf containing a representative peer-reviewed scientific publication.
For further information, please contact Dr Lily Twining.