Decision Science Intern, Environmental Defense Fund – California

Organization: Environmental Defense Fund

Position Title: Decision Science Intern

Location: Bay Area of California. Work can be done remotely, but regular visits to EDF’s office in San Francisco will be encouraged.

Application Deadline: Position until filled

Description: Environmental Defense seeks two Decision Science Interns for the Research and Development arm of Environmental Defense Fund’s Oceans Program. The R&D team works to find breakthrough solutions and identify emerging issues in environmental conservation.

Decision Science is an umbrella term encompassing many scientific disciplines devoted to understanding why people behave as they do and why they make the decisions they make. As human behavior is at the root of both environmental problems and their solutions, it’s vital to incorporate scientific understanding of human behavior into the environmental movement.

Under the supervision of the director of the R&D Team, Rod Fujita, the interns will play a vital role in helping to determine which findings from decision science are most robust in creating pro-environmental behaviors. The intern(s) will be assisting in the creation of a comprehensive decision science database, ultimately leading to a publication that examines how decision science can be used to improve environmental campaigns and policy and potential application to a specific ocean conservation initiative (e.g., combatting illegal fishing).

Responsibilities:

• Assist members of the Research and Development team with research in the field of decision science
• Reviewing scientific literature related to specific behavioral science principles (such as loss aversion or the use of well-designed defaults)
• Extracting and entering key findings into a database and summarizing findings in a report for distribution
• Coordinating the sharing of key environmental findings with team members

Qualifications:

• Advanced undergraduates and co-terms, preferably with experience or coursework in neuroscience, behavioral economics, cognitive psychology or similar
• Strong proficiency in statistics – understands intricacies in various tests (ANOVA, t-tests, regression, chi-square, etc.) and in calculating effect size
• Attention to detail, organizational and communication skills, and the ability to work independently
• Some experience with meta-analysis
• A committed interest in the conservation-related mission of EDF

How to Apply: Apply on the EDF jobs webpage.