Postdoctoral Research Fellow - School of Public Health

The Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health seeks a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to join the Health-Atmosphere Nexus Group under the supervision of Dr. Yun Hang.

About the role

The successful candidate will conduct interdisciplinary research integrating satellite remote sensing, environmental exposure assessment, artificial intelligence, epidemiology, and multi-omics to investigate the biological and population health impacts of environmental exposures. The fellow will contribute to federally funded research projects that integrate Earth observation data, environmental monitoring, epidemiologic cohorts, and genomic and multi-omics resources to better understand the mechanisms linking environmental exposures to human health.

Research activities will include developing high-resolution environmental exposure products, advancing AI-enabled environmental health methods, supporting molecular epidemiology studies, and translating research findings into public health applications through collaborations with academic and government partners.

Responsibilities

• Develop high-resolution environmental exposure datasets by integrating satellite remote sensing, environmental monitoring, meteorological, and geospatial data.
• Design and implement scalable computational workflows and high-performance computing pipelines for processing large environmental and health datasets.
• Develop and apply artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistical methods for environmental exposure modeling, data fusion, spatial prediction, and uncertainty quantification.
• Integrate environmental exposure data with epidemiologic, genomic, and multi-omics resources, including GWAS, whole-genome sequencing, whole-exome sequencing, metabolomics, proteomics, lipidomics, and DNA methylation datasets.
• Investigate the molecular, genetic, and population health impacts of environmental exposures, including air pollution, climate-related hazards, and other environmental stressors.
• Contribute to studies examining environmental determinants of chronic disease, cardiometabolic health, and health disparities.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary investigators across environmental health, epidemiology, biostatistics, genetics, Earth science, and computer science.
• Prepare peer-reviewed manuscripts, present research findings at scientific conferences, and contribute to NIH, NASA, and other federal grant applications.
• Mentor graduate and undergraduate students participating in research projects.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Requirements

• Doctoral/Terminal Degree in Environmental Health, Environmental Engineering, Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Remote Sensing, Geography, Atmospheric Science, Applied Mathematics, or a closely related quantitative discipline.
• Demonstrated experience in environmental data science, geospatial analysis, remote sensing, epidemiology, bioinformatics, or related research areas.
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or R, with experience working in Linux/Unix environments.
• Experience processing and analyzing large environmental, geospatial, biomedical, or population health datasets.
• Excellent quantitative, analytical, scientific writing, and communication skills, with evidence of peer-reviewed publications.
• Experience with satellite remote sensing, environmental exposure modeling, or spatial statistics.
• Experience with artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, or cloud/high-performance computing.
• Experience working with genomic, multi-omics, or large epidemiologic cohort datasets.
• Familiarity with environmental epidemiology, molecular epidemiology, or precision public health research.
• Experience with reproducible research workflows, version control, and open-source software development.

Benefits

• 100% paid medical premiums for full-time employees
• Generous time off (holidays, preventative leave day, both vacation and sick time – equating to around 37-38 days per year)
• Vacation accrual increases with tenure
• Retirement/pension plan
• Free financial and legal counseling
• Free mental health counseling services
• Gym membership discounts and access to wellness programs
• Employee discounts (entertainment, car rentals, cell phones, etc.)
• Resources for child and elder care

Physical Requirements

Exerts up to 20 pounds of force occasionally and/or up to 10 pounds frequently and/or a negligible amount constantly to move objects.

Employees must permanently reside and work in the State of Texas. This position is security-sensitive pursuant to Texas Education Code 51.215 and Texas Government Code 411.094. To the extent that a position requires the holder to research, work on, or have access to critical infrastructure, the ability to maintain the security or integrity of the infrastructure is a minimum qualification for employment.