Postdoctoral Associate

About the Lab & University

The Geospatial Analytics, Technology and Open Research (GATOR) Lab at the University of Florida conducts research at the intersection of GIScience, spatial data engineering, and open science. Part of UF’s School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences, the lab is based at the Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center in Davie, Florida (Miami–Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area). The University of Florida is a top-ranked public land-grant research university offering world-class computational resources (including the HiPerGator supercomputer) and a vibrant collaborative research environment.

Role Description

We are seeking a Postdoctoral Associate (Postdoctoral Researcher / Fellow) in Spatial Data Science, Geoinformatics, Geomatics, or Computational Geometry to conduct advanced research on Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) and scalable geospatial computing. This position offers significant intellectual freedom to collaboratively shape the research agenda. Potential research directions include:

• DGGS Architecture & Benchmarking: Evaluating computational performance, geometric distortion, and cross-grid interoperability across hexagonal, pentagonal, triangular, and quadrilateral grids (e.g., H3, S2, A5, ISEA/DGGRID, HEALPix, rHEALPix).
• Spatial Scale & Aggregation Theory: Investigating modifiable areal unit and aperture effects, hierarchical indexing, and topological operations on the sphere/ellipsoid.
• Cloud-Native Geospatial & Earth Data Cubes: Integrating DGGS with modern spatial data infrastructures, vector/raster data cubes, and cloud-native formats (e.g., GeoParquet, DuckDB, Zarr, Xarray/xdggs).
• Open-Source Software & Standards: Developing open-source geospatial libraries, benchmarking suites, and contributing to OGC/ISO/ISPRS community initiatives.

The Postdoctoral Associate will lead peer-reviewed publications, develop open-source research software, contribute to collaborative grant proposals, present at international conferences, and help mentor Ph.D. and M.S. students in the lab.

This is a full-time, on-site position located in Davie, Florida (Miami–Fort Lauderdale Area). Placement on the main campus in Gainesville, FL is also possible.

Qualifications

• Education: Ph.D. in Geomatics, GIScience, Geoinformatics, Geography, Computer Science, Computational Geometry, Earth System Science, or a closely related quantitative discipline by the start date.
• Technical Skills: Strong scientific programming and software development skills in Python, R, C++, Rust, or modern spatial SQL (e.g., PostGIS, DuckDB).
• Domain Experience: Demonstrated research experience in at least one of the following:
• Discrete Global Grid Systems (H3, S2, DGGRID, A5, HEALPix, etc.) or spherical/geodesic geometry.
• Spatial indexing, computational geometry, or polyhedral meshes.
• Large-scale spatial data engineering, cloud-native geospatial stacks, or Earth observation data cubes.
• Quantitative spatial analysis, spatial statistics, or GeoAI.
• Scholarship & Open Science: A strong track record of peer-reviewed publications, commitment to reproducible/open-source research (Git/GitHub), and excellent written and oral communication skills.