Research Specialist

The Organization

The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) delivers research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives. Alliance solutions address the global crises of malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation.

With novel partnerships, the Alliance generates evidence and mainstreams innovations to transform food systems and landscapes so that they sustain the planet, drive prosperity, and nourish people in a climate crisis.

The Alliance is part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.

About the position

Within the sector of food environment and consumer behavior, there is an increase in complexity in data analysis which requires analytical competence and communication skills to identify appropriate methods in system approaches. The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT seeks a Research Specialist to support the Food Environment and Consumer Behavior team in the African region on experimental research designs, sample size calculations, sampling methodologies, data quality control, statistical analysis, data visualization, and curation.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the provision of statistical guidance and backstopping to an interdisciplinary team of scientists working on food systems through the full research cycle from design, sample size calculations, sampling, analysis to publication and dissemination.
• Contribute to the development and use of standard operating procedures for data capture and processing for experiments that are widely applied.
• Contribute to developing/validating indicators and indices on the food environment associated with food and nutrition security risk factors.
• Support in-house capacity building in food systems statistical analysis and the use of statistical packages
• Provide statistical knowledge about new methods, tools, and approaches as demanded by food environment and consumer behavior research staff.
• Participate in relevant activities such as project planning and data analysis meetings.
• Provide assistance in the presentation of results including visualization of data.
• Contribute to research data management and scientific article publication.
• Contribute to the creation of a research quality system that sets up processes, protocols, and policies to maintain and improve the quality of research.
• Support in any other related activities as advised by the supervisor.

Qualification and Experience

• Ph.D. or MSc in Social Sciences, i.e. social economics, agricultural economics, or a similar field with a background in statistical analysis and computing in agriculture and nutrition.
• General experience supporting the use of statistical tools and methodologies in research.
• Experience in statistical analysis using “R”, “SPSS”, “SAS”, “Stata”, “GenStat”
• Knowledge of Database Management systems will be an added advantage
• Contribute to creating tools and data collection using mobile and CAPI tools and retrieving data from other databases and systems using API’s and other interoperability protocols
• Contribute to cleaning and synthesizing data to guarantee accuracy and fitness of purpose for use in creating food, agriculture, land, and water systems metrics
• Support in developing, maintaining, and administering well-documented databases that manage interconnected and multidisciplinary research data using different database technologies, and platforms
• Contribute to developing analytics and modeling frameworks using statistical software
• development languages, ideally “Python” or “R”, and complementarily Stata
• Contribute to the development of data visualization applications for displaying and tracking metrics
• English Advanced level (oral and written)

Desirable qualifications and competencies

• Strong teamwork, interpersonal, and communications skills; courtesy and the ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with people of different cultural and national backgrounds
• Ability to work independently within assigned areas complemented by sound judgment and initiative and the ability to maintain structured and ad hoc communications with supervisors and colleagues to seek guidance
• Strong ability to coordinate, prioritize and organize workload; take initiative and work under pressure.
• Excellent communication and ability to communicate to a variety of audiences.
• Willingness and enthusiasm to learn and practice new technologies as needed

Terms of employment

This is an internationally recruited staff position to be located in Nairobi, Kenya. The contract will be for a fixed term of two (2) years, subject to a probation period of six (6) months, with possibilities of renewal based on performance and availability of funds. This position is graded at level BG08 on a scale of 14 levels with BG14 being the highest level.

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT offers a multicultural research environment, with competitive salaries and excellent benefits. We are an equal opportunity employer, and strive for gender, diversity, and inclusion in our staff, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, marital status, or any other characteristic.