UNDP Data Science Fellowship Opportunity (Home Based)

March 9, 2024March 9, 2024 Carlos Seth 0 Comments Data Science Fellowship, UNDP

ORGANIZATION	UNDP
LOCATION	Home Based
CAREER CATEGORY	Digital Solutions
SALARY	Not Specified
TYPE OF CONTRACT	Fellowship
DURATION	12 months
DEADLINE	10 March 2024

UNDP Data Science Fellowship Opportunity (Home Based)

Context

The Istanbul International Center for Private Sector in Development (ICPSD) is the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) global organization mandated to leverage the role of the private sector in development. The ICPSD was established in Istanbul, Turkey based on the Partnership Framework Agreement signed between the Government of the Republic of Turkey and the United Nations Development Program in March 2011. The center is one of the six global thematic policy centers of UNDP, supports the private sector and foundations to become transformative partners in development through research, advocacy, facilitation of public-private dialogue and brokering partnerships. IICPSD leads UNDP’s global work on private sector and foundations and supports UNDP’s offices all around the world.

FELLOWSHIP OFFICE BACKGROUND:

The SDG AI Lab is a joint initiative of UNDP BPPS (Bureau for Policy and Programme Support) team, and it is hosted under UNDP ICPSD. The SDG AI Lab provides research, development, and advisory support through cutting-edge digital solutions in harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for sustainable development. The Lab aims to strengthen the UNDP’s internal and its partners’ capacities for the increasing demand for digital transformation.

The objective of the Data Science Fellowship is to provide the opportunity to work on how to deploy frontier technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Deep Learning (DL), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs) on development issues. In particular, the Fellow will contribute to data acquisition, data analysis, modelling, deployment, and visualizations efforts.

Task Description

The Fellow will assist in the following duties and responsibilities:

Research and knowledge products development
Development and implementation of digital solutions for SDGs utilizing AI/ML/DL/NLP
Provide as needed support to the Technical Specialist as required for, amongst others, participating in meetings, conferences, providing administrative support, drafting meeting minutes and performing other functions and duties

Qualifications

Competencies

Language skills:

Fluent in English with excellent reading and writing skills is required.
Proficiency in French is an asset

Other competencies and attitudes:

Interest and motivation in working in an international organization
Good analytical skills in gathering and consolidating data and research for practical implementation
Outgoing and initiative-taking person with a goal-oriented mind-set
Communicates effectively when working in teams and independently
Good in organizing and structuring various tasks and responsibilities
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability
Responds positively to feedback and differing points of view
Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude.

Required Skills and Experience

REQUIREMENTS AND QUALIFICATIONS

Education:

Candidates must meet one of the following educational requirements:

currently enrolled in a postgraduate programme (such as a master’s programme or higher)
have graduated no longer than 2 years ago from a university degree or equivalent studies

Field of study: Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Statistics, Econometrics, Mathematics, Economics or equivalent

Completion of the Frontier Tech Leaders Machine Learning Bootcamp is an asset.

IT skills:

Strong understanding of LLM theory, foundation models, and deep learning principles.
Proficiency in Prompt Engineering, LLM fine-tuning, and chaining technologies like LangChain and Semantic Kernel.
Proven expertise in project development and implementation within machine learning, using tools like Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.
Experience in executing projects related to natural language processing, utilizing NLTK, SpaCy, Bert, GPT-3, RoBERTa.
Skilled in programming languages, particularly Python.
Thorough knowledge of SQL and data modeling techniques.
Hands-on experience in data science and data visualization projects using tools like Power BI or Tableau is an asset.