Postdoctoral Research Associate

Jan 26 A postdoctoral research associate is sought to develop tools to mobilize data in herbarium specimens for conservation action, as part of a project funded through the Bezos Earth Fund’s AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge. The postdoctoral research associate will report to Emily Sessa, Patricia K. Holmgren Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at NYBG. Herbaria—scientific collections of preserved plant specimens—represent one of the most important frontiers for plant species discovery and for understanding, assessing, and protecting threatened biodiversity. Globally, billions of herbarium specimens contain critical information on species distributions, traits, and environmental responses, yet much of this information remains locked in images and unstructured labels. This project harnesses recent advances in artificial intelligence to unlock these underutilized data at unprecedented scale, with the goal of accelerating biodiversity discovery, informing conservation priorities, and supporting evidence-based environmental decision-making. The postdoctoral research associate will play a central role in this effort by designing and implementing a web-based AI tool that takes digitized herbarium specimen images as input and produces structured textual outputs, including specimen-level data extraction and synthesized summaries, specifically tailored to support IUCN Red List assessments for species of priority conservation concern. Responsibilities will include developing and integrating vision-language and computer vision models, translating AI outputs into formats aligned with Red List criteria, and collaborating with conservation scientists to ensure the tool is accurate, interpretable, and usable for real-world conservation assessments.

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