Senior Scientist

Company Description

By working at Harvard University, you join a vibrant community that advances Harvard's world-changing mission in meaningful ways, inspires innovation and collaboration, and builds skills and expertise. We are dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming environment where everyone can thrive.

Why join the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences?

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is the historic heart of Harvard University. It is the home of Harvard’s undergraduate program (Harvard College, founded in 1636) as well as all of Harvard’s Ph.D. programs (the Harvard Kenneth

C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, founded in 1872), Harvard Athletics and the Division of Continuing Education. The 40 academic departments and 30+ centers of the FAS support a community unparalleled in its academic excellence across the broadest range of liberal arts and sciences disciplines. Together, the FAS seeks to foster an environment of ambition, curiosity and shared commitment to knowledge and truth that elicits excellence from all members of our community and prepares the next generation of leaders through a transformative educational experience.

Harvard Forest is committed to establishing and maintaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community. We have initiated an ongoing series of staff-wide trainings and formed a standing committee to build competence in DEIB in our workplace, improved physical and digital accessibility of our campus resources, and re‑examined and replaced harmful artwork. We are working toward including Indigenous knowledge and communities in our research and education, land use, and public programs, improving field safety for at‑risk populations, and diversifying our team of investigators and educators.

The aim of this work is to collectively support and implement our mission: the investigation, understanding, and communication of the ways in which physical, biological, and human systems interact to change our Earth, while ensuring that all participants should feel that they are critical parts of the Harvard Forest community—whatever their identity groups. We welcome, recruit, develop, and advance talented staff, students, and visiting scholars from diverse backgrounds, and strive to ensure that all are included in our mission.

Harvard Forest is also committed to supporting the work‑life balance of its staff.

We seek a colleague with a successful research, publication, and funding record to join the Harvard Forest senior research staff. We hope to identify a candidate who will lead science and operations of the Harvard Forest’s long‑running eddy covariance towers, and who will flourish in our collaborative intellectual environment. As a research department, we are connected to many departments and schools across Harvard University and other institutions.

From a rural field station setting, with robust long‑long‑term ecological research experiments, Harvard Forest scientists build transformative research programs that serve stakeholders across the region and globe and prepare a diverse next generation of ecologists and land stewards.

A core part of this position is to lead long‑term sites that form the backbone of Harvard Forest’s long‑term carbon budget by measuring ecosystem CO2, water, and energy fluxes. The EMS site includes a new (2025) tower to carry on the flux measurement record at this site that began in 1991, and the Hemlock site was established in 2004 and updated in 2014.

We welcome additional research foci that augment and enhance existing programs at the Harvard Forest and leverage established archival, land, and research infrastructure developed over more than a century of study. The researcher will join a collaborative group of senior scientists who design, fund, conduct, and publish research relating to forested landscapes of New England; advance engagement with relevant policy‑and‑decision‑makers;

and collaborate with a wide network of external researchers. Senior researchers’ salaries are department‑funded, and scientists are expected to develop an externally funded research…