Summer 2025: GRI Research Assistantship

Position Summary

The GRI at William & Mary has opened for three undergraduate research assistant positions. The team is engaged in two projects: one uses advanced deep learning algorithms to classify rainwater harvesting system (demi-lune) in African, aiming to identify demilune structures and create high-quality maps for environmental analysis, with applications in climate-sensitive agriculture and biodiversity conservation; the other focuses on a geospatial impact evaluation of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) in India, conducted in collaboration with FAO economists, to assess the program's impact on poverty reduction and women’s empowerment. These projects provide opportunities to learn state-of-the-art methods in deep learning, data preparation, programming, geospatial analysis, and impact evaluation, while offering hands-on experience in accessing reliable datasets and applying evaluation methodologies for real-world research.

This position covers the whole summer semester, that will start as soon as possible after 05.10.2025.

The rate of this position is from $12.00 to $15.00 per hour.

Approximate Hours Per Week: max 40 hours

_{Primary responsibilities include:}

·         Collect ground reference data through fieldwork and open-access geospatial datasets.

·         Clean and preprocess raw data using programming languages or GIS software

·         Conduct literature reviews related to project topics

·         Write and edit scripts in Python and/or R

Required Qualifications

·          The ideal candidate should has completed GIS and programming courses at William & Mary.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

·         Background in data analysis and economic

·         Know how to use GIS software including QGIS and ArcGIS

·         Basic programming knowledge from data science courses

Preferred Qualifications

·         Strong geospatial analysis skills

·         Proficiency in using ArcGIS Pro for geospatial analysis

·         Ability to write basic Python/R scripts