Information for Faculty

DDDI will support the hiring of outstanding postdoctoral fellows in the natural and social sciences with expertise in data science. The support will be in the form of a $5000 research stipend for 1 year, subject to renewal. We intend to support 4-6 postdocs across SAS. These postdocs could either already be at Penn or they could be new hires. For postdocs co-supervised by faculty from SAS and another school (e.g. Wharton, PSOM), the application should clearly state that the postdoc has research interests spanning both schools and which faculty members from which schools would be supervising them. Regardless of which school the postdoc is affiliated with, the postdoc’s salary must come from a SAS budget.

The ideal candidate would have expertise in their own discipline as well as the modern methodology of machine learning and statistics. They would have a faculty advisor and a possible co-advisor in a separate department. They would benefit from the activities of DDDI, including seminars, lunch-time faculty talks and discussions, and interactions with students and postdocs across SAS with overlapping interests. They would help organize some of these activities and spend up to 1 day per week at a shared work space on campus. Their data science activities would be synergistic with their research.

A committee of SAS faculty will be responsible for selecting the postdocs. For current postdocs at Penn, faculty members will need to follow the submission guidelines for research stipends from our application instructions page.

Faculty members who would like to include research stipends from DDDI in their postdoctoral ads to attract new candidates can: (a) include language about DDDI and data science expertise in their ad, (b) let us know of their hiring plan and timing, (c) when a shortlist has been made, let us know the name of applicant(s) from the shortlist who they would like considered for stipend support, (d) have those applicants submit their DDDI postdoc stipend support application materials listed on our application instructions page to us. The committee would then make a selection prior to making the offer, so the faculty member knows they can count on partial funding from DDDI.

Expressions of interest and questions may be emailed to ddd-info@sas.upenn.edu