Postdoctoral Researcher, Paleontology

About the California Academy of Sciences

The California Academy of Sciences is a globally renowned scientific and cultural institution located in the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Home to a world-class planetarium, aquarium, research center, and natural history museum—all under one living roof—our mission is to regenerate the natural world through science, learning, and collaboration.

Our extensive collections span plants, animals, fossils, and cultural artifacts from across the globe and throughout history. We are a diverse team of leading biodiversity scientists, educators, storytellers, designers, and communicators who work collaboratively to advance knowledge and inspire action through science and storytelling.

When you join the California Academy of Sciences, you become part of a mission‑driven community that values curiosity, collaboration, and innovation. Whether you’re working behind the scenes in research or engaging the public on the museum floor, your work will help connect people to the natural world and empower them to protect it.

The Roopnarine Paleontology Lab at the California Academy of Sciences seeks an exceptional Post‑Doctoral Research Associate with expertise in quantitative paleo ecology. The applicant will join a new NSF‑funded research project to address whether communities at certain times in the past, specifically during and immediately after mass extinctions, may have been structured and functioned differently from communities during more environmentally quiescent times.

Food webs have emerged as a paleontologically accessible type of interspecific network, yet their reconstruction remains methodologically challenging. Reconstruction relies on modeling approaches to infer interspecific interactions, all of which operate under a uniformitarian assumption that the principles determining interspecific interactions have remained constant through time. We challenge that uniformitarian assumption by proposing a framework within which to test alternative principles of inferred species properties, particularly following extreme ecological disturbances, offering new insight into paleocommunity structure and function.

We will examine late Permian and Early Triassic communities from South China and the northwestern United states, testing both uniformitarian and alternative models. Test systems include boundary‑and mass extinction‑spanning communities, as well as communities that represent early stages of recovery from the Permian‑Triassic mass extinction.

Work will consist of paleocommunity reconstructions, model building and execution, and analytical methods development. The postdoctoral researcher will be involved in all project activities, including field work in China and the United States, travel to and presentation at professional meetings, and publication of project results. They will also assist with collections curation and digitization, project coordination, communication, outreach activities, and formal/informal education.

The researcher will be co‑mentored by Peter Roopnarine (California Academy of Sciences) and project co‑PI Ashley Dineen (University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley), and will have the opportunity to interact with both institutions.

This position is based in San Francisco, California. Staff are currently expected to work from the Academy offices at least 2‑3 times per week, which may fluctuate based on business needs. Please do not apply if you are not able to work onsite. The initial appointment will be for 12 months, with potential for a second 12 month appointment depending upon performance and funding.

We hope you are inspired by what we do and are excited to contribute to our mission. The mission of the California Academy of Sciences is to regenerate the natural world through science, learning, and collaboration. The Academy is looking for candidates who do great work, and we know they may come from a number of different backgrounds and experiences. We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every qualification for the position.

This position is part of a bargaining unit…