Job Description - Research Assistant
China Future City Lab (CFC Lab)
Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT
The China Future City Lab (CFC Lab) is seeking a student research assistant with Spatial and Data Analysis education and experience, interest in urban studies, and motivated to work with data from São Paulo (Brazil) and Beijing (China).
Duties & Responsibilities
Providing research assistance on the theme “Infrastructure, Networks and Urban Vibrancy”, one of the three core research themes of CFC Lab. This position will perform a wide range of data manipulation and analysis duties supporting the development of multi-cities comparative study on how transportation shapes the built environment, focused on São Paulo’s and Beijing’s urban context and data.
Activities
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Collecting, manipulating, compiling, and cleaning GIS data on transportation, infrastructure, amenities, and other urban context elements from the city of São Paulo and Beijing.
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Creating data descriptive graphs, maps, charts, and tables.
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Performing first-versions of econometric and spatial data analysis.
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Presenting updates on weekly meeting with principal investigators.
Skills
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Candidates should have programming experience in R for data processing and analysis.
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Candidates should be comfortable working with geographic data in R using packages as “maptools”, “rgeos”, and “sf”.
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Candidates should also have some experience with geoprocessing technologies (e.g., ArcGIS and QGIS software).
Time Status
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Part-time: up to 10 hours per week.
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This position begins immediately and lasts through the spring 2019 semester.
Compensation
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Hourly-payment: $20 per hour worked.
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Weekly timesheet reports that will be approved by principal investigators.
Applications should provide a CV and cover letter to abcosta@mit.edu. Application open until filled.