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Scientific Information Officer (SIO) Farm Animals

Scientific Information Officer (SIO) – Farm Animals

Salary: £25,634 - £27,096 per annum plus benefits (Ref: SIO/689).

Location: RSPCA, Southwater, Horsham, West Sussex

The RSPCA is the largest animal welfare charity in England and Wales. Our purpose is to end cruelty and promote kindness to animals and to alleviate their suffering.

We are seeking to recruit a Scientific Information Officer committed to animal welfare to join the RSPCA Farm Animals Department within the Science Group to assist in the work of encouraging the adoption of high standards of welfare for all farmed animals.

Responsibilities include:

Development and maintenance of scientific/technical information resources on farm animal welfare and production for a wide range of audiences.

Coordinating the on-going development of the RSPCA welfare standards for farm animals as used by the Society’s farm assurance scheme, Freedom Food.

Liaising and exchanging information with the farming industry, scientific research sector, and UK and European Governmental and non-Governmental bodies.

Skills and experience include:

Graduate in a relevant scientific discipline e.g. animal/agricultural/welfare science (relevant post-graduate qualification advantageous).

An understanding of the main farm animal production systems and the farming industry; knowledge of key species-specific livestock welfare issues would be an advantage.

Excellent communication skills and attention to detail, and ability to write clear, concise reports for both scientific and lay audiences.

Excellent organizational skills and competent IT user.

The post is a permanent, full-time position.

Closing date for completed applications: 18 October 2015

Interviews will take place on: 17 November 2015

For further details and an application form, please download the documents below. Or, write to: farm-animals@rspca.org.uk or to: Farm Animals Department, RSPCA, Wilberforce Way, Southwater, Horsham, West Sussex RH13 9RS. Please quote the following reference number for the post: SSO/689.

Promoting kindness and preventing cruelty to animals.

The RSPCA offers excellent benefits including private healthcare, defined contribution pension scheme, childcare vouchers, employee assistance programme and a subsidised staff restaurant.

Charity registered in England and Wales, number 219099

We value diversity and encourage applications from all sections of the community

To apply

Assistant Professor in Cognition/Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology McGill University, Montreal, Quebec

The Department of Psychology at McGill University invites applications for a tenure-track appointment at the Assistant Professor level with an anticipated start date of September 1, 2016. We seek a candidate who addresses topics in human cognition/cognitive neuroscience by combining experimental approaches with quantitative, computational, or neuroscience methods. The candidate will be expected to teach courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and to maintain an active program of research. 

Review of applications will begin on October 28, 2015, and will continue until suitable candidates have been identified. 

Applicants should arrange for the following materials to be sent in electronic format to cogcns-search [ chez ] psych.mcgill.ca: 

1) a curriculum vitae; 2) a brief statement of research interests; 3) a teaching statement; 4) copies of at most three scholarly papers; and 5) three confidential letters of recommendation. 

McGill University is committed to equity in employment and diversity. It welcomes applications from Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, ethnic minorities, persons of minority sexual orientation or gender identity, visible minorities, women, and others who may contribute to diversification. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority. 

WebLink: http://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/careers#cog 

PhD positions in Human Origin

We invite applications for the Leipzig School of Human Origins, a joint Ph.D. program of the University of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Our Ph.D. program is open for international students and is designed as a 3-year-program starting in the Fall of 2016. The closing date for applications is *December 1, 2015*.

We would be grateful if you communicated the announcement to students who wish to work towards a Ph.D. in archaeology, anthropology, biology, biochemistry, bioinformatics, computational biology, evolutionary genetics, paleoanthropology, primatology, and related fields.

More details on the research groups that are part of the Leipzig School of Human Origins and information on the application procedures may be found at http://www.leipzig-school.eva.mpg.de/

Thank you very much for your help

and kind regards,

Sandra Jacob

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Sandra Jacob

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology / The Leipzig School of Human Origins (Ph.D. Programme) Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, GERMANY

phone: ++49 (0) 341 3550-122; fax: ++49 (0) 341 3550-119 http://www.eva.mpg.de/ http://www.leipzig-school.eva.mpg.de/

Workshop in Erice (Sicily)

We are delighted to invite you to the International Workshop “ANIMAL AND HUMAN EMOTIONS” which will take place on May 17-22, 2016, in Erice, Sicily (Italy). The workshop will be held within the School of Neuroscience at the “Ettore Majorana” Erice Centre and is supported by the Italian government. Organizers: Pier Francesco Ferrari and Frans de Waal

 Please visit our website: http://old.unipr.it/arpa/mirror/erice2016/speakers.htm

The workshop will be held in Erice, in Sicily, a gorgeous ancient seaside city in Italy. There will be ample time in between sessions to explore the city and sample the local restaurants. The workshop will include an excursion into the countryside to visit ancient Greek temples. 

The purpose of the Workshop is to highlight new perspectives on animal and humans emotions. Since Darwin’s seminal work of almost 150 years ago, scientists have debated why we express emotions, how we understand them in others and how emotions impact our choices and moral judgments. In the study of animal behavior, talk of emotions has long been taboo, followed by a time in which they were declared irrelevant. In the last few decades, this situation has changed, however, and animal emotions are more openly considered. Emotions can be seen as evolutionary adaptations to the environment, but also as an important process that provides the glue of social groups. Even though emotions are often lumped together with instincts, they are also critical in abstract reasoning, planning, and moral judgment. Modern technology requires the construction of robots and machines that either have some sort of emotional organization or communicate emotionally with us. Engineers will contribute to the workshop by elucidating how emotions are central in artificial intelligence. Most psychopathologies or neurodevelopmental disorders are associated with deregulation of emotional processes and therefore our comprehension of their role in development and in clinical populations is critical. This workshop will bring together leading figures in science who apply an evolutionary method and an interdisciplinary approach to the basic mechanisms of emotions in order to understand how they organize behavior. The workshop will foster discussion between scholars, students and researchers from different field of sciences: Ethology, Psychology, Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Robotics, Anthropology.  

The workshop is highly integrative and interdisciplinary. Thus, we encourage speakers to give a presentation addressed to a broad audience represented by different disciplines and within disciplines, by different levels of seniority (e.g., graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, junior and senior faculty). Once we have finalized the list of speakers, we will open a website to announce the meeting and open up registration for approximately 120 graduate students, postdocs, and other interested scientists.

Issues covered by the Workshop will be: 1. Neural mechanism of emotions, 2. Empathy and prosocial behavior, 3. Development, 4. Psychopathology, 5. Learning, 6. Artificial intelligence and emotions.

M2: Linking animal behaviour to individual fitness in a changing world, IPHC-DEPE, Strasbourg, Fr

Linking animal behaviour to individual fitness in a changing world


Keywords: personality, behavioural plasticity, ageing, life history strategies

Behaviour is a frontline response to environmental change and is often regarded as a highly plastic trait. Therefore, widespread reports of behavioural consistencies across time/contexts in nature, often refereed to personality traits, call into question the best way to study the adaptiveness and diversity of behavioural traits. As climatic change is predicted to increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather episodes, it remains unclear whether some behavioural traits are better adapted to face environmental changes and to which extent long-lived individuals could adjust their behaviours to the prevailing environmental conditions whereas short-lived individuals adopt fixed behaviours.

In this project, you will have access to a unique long-term study of long-lived bird species, the Alpine swift, that forages exclusively on its wings, thus making this species highly vulnerable to episodes of inclement weather. Behaviours on the nest were recorded for all the individuals over the past 15 years, which will allow you to investigate how plastic is this trait, whether short- and long-lived individuals differ in the behavioural plasticity and consistency, influence of the climatic factors on behavioural plasticity, and ultimately how behaviours related to individual fitness.


The project will be based at the IPHC-DEPE in Strasbourg for a period of 5 months, starting in Jan 2016. Field work in Alpine swift colonies in Switzerland is planned in May.
The student will be co-supervised by Vincent Viblanc, Pierre Bize and François Criscuolo. A gratuity of 546 euros/mo. is included.
If interested, get in touch with Vincent Viblanc at vincent.viblanc [ chez ] iphc.cnrs.fr