NIEA Provision of Temporary Research Assistants

Tender description

The NIEA is an executive agency of the Department of the Environment. The Agency’s Water Management Unit operates a laboratory facility at Antrim Road, Lisburn. The laboratory generates large and diverse datasets each year, which serve a variety of purposes in meeting the Agency’s obligations in relation to the monitoring and assessment of the aquatic environment. Role of Research Assistants The role of a Research Assistant (RA) may include a range of interesting and challenging projects or tasks: development of monitoring and classification tools based on ecological data; input to the interpretation analysis and presentation of large and complex biological, physical and chemical datasets. The work may involve the development of new techniques in such diverse areas as microbiological testing, ecological assessment methods or toxicological testing. There may be an element of fieldwork depending on the work area and an RA may be expected to undertake specialist training in specific elements of aquatic biology. There will be a strong element of statistical application to existing datasets and a need to undertake research of the scientific literature to identify broad approaches to specific projects.