08 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Heriot-Watt University has established a reputation for world-class teaching and leading-edge, relevant research, which has made it one of the top UK universities for innovation, business and industry. Heriot-Watt University has five campuses: three in the UK (Edinburgh, Scottish Borders and Orkney), one in Dubai and one in Malaysia. The University offers a highly distinctive range of degree programmes in the specialist areas of science, engineering, design, business and languages. Heriot-Watt is also Scotland’s most international university, boasting the largest international student cohort.

We are actively looking for a talented researcher in robotics and machine learning to work on the Prosperity Partnership project between Heriot-Watt and Seebyte Ltd. The Project Vision is to develop a coherent framework that enables humans and machines to work as a team by establishing and maintaining a single shared view of the world and each other’s intents through transparent interaction, robust to a highly dynamic and unpredictable maritime environment. We aim at removing workers from harsh and extreme environments to replaced them with teams of smart robots able to do the ‘dirty and dangerous jobs’, collaborating seamlessly as a team with each other and with human operators and experts on-shore. In this new world, remote data collection, fusion and interpretation become critical, together with the ability to generate actionable decisions from this data, sending remote robots to perform actions autonomously.

The research associate will work within the MDMC (Medical Device Manufacturing Centre), which in Phase 2 is funded by Scottish Enterprise. The MDMC supports SMEs manufacturing medical devices, offering manufacturing, engineering, regulatory and business development expertise. This post would suit someone who enjoys working in a high paced environment, on a variety of relatively short-term projects. MDMC Phase 2 involves 4 other universities, with significant technical activities at 3 of these, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. MDMC facilities include various manufacturing techniques as well as a suite of analysis equipment. The technologies that are available include, but are not limited to: laser micro-machining, laser cutting, laser welding, 3D printing, spray jetting of conductive inks, low temperature co-fired ceramic, optical material modification, electro-discharge machining (EDM), injection moulding and suite of analysis equipment, including microscopes, SEM, optical surface profiler, polishing and sectioning equipment.

A post-doctoral position is available as part of an exciting EPSRC project aiming to explore the radio waves carrying orbital angular momentum for the multiple spatial mode multiplexing in the wireless communication systems. The post will be held within the Microwave and Antenna Engineering Group at Heriot-Watt University and will involve the development of orthogonal radiation beams to increase the communication capacity, including the theory derivation, prototype design and experimental tests. The selected candidate will also work with other group members as well as external partners to plan, design, and implement a satellite ground terminal.  We are seeking candidates with a record that will demonstrate their capability to effectively deliver the required research activities. You will have a strong academic track record with knowledge and experience in the area of radio communications, RF systems, as well as array antennas and metasurfaces. You will be competent in microwave device and subsystem design, including in CST/HFSS, MATLAB and so on. You will have a good understanding of the challenges emerging in the hardware implementation involve passive and active RF devices.

A Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) is needed for a research project, fully funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), initially for 12 months from 1st July 2023 or as soon as possible but can be extended depending on the availability of funding. The research project COG-MHEAR: Towards cognitively inspired 5G-IoT enabled, multi-modal Hearing Aids funded by UK research council (EPSRC), involves six academic partners including University of Edinburgh and industrial partners including Bell-Labs, Alcatel-Lucent Technologies, USA and Sonova AG. The research will explore and validate the new concept hearing-aid to transform hearing care by 2050, we aim to completely re-think the way HAs are designed. Our transformative approach – for the first time – draws on the cognitive principles of normal hearing. Listeners naturally combine information from both their ears and eyes: we use our eyes to help us hear. We will create “multi-modal” aids which not only amplify sounds but contextually use simultaneously collected information from a range of sensors to improve speech intelligibility. Adding in these new sensors and the processing that is required to make sense of the data produced will place a significant additional power and miniaturization burden on the HA device. We will need to make our sophisticated visual and sound processing algorithms operate with minimum power and minimum delay, and will achieve this by making dedicated hardware implementations, accelerating the key processing steps. In the long term, we aim for all processing to be done in the HA itself – keeping data local to the person for privacy. In the shorter term, some processing will need to be done in the cloud (as it is too power intensive) and we will create new very low latency (<10ms) interfaces to cloud infrastructure to avoid delays between when a word is “seen” being spoken and when it is heard. We also plan to utilize advances in flexible electronics (e-skin) and antenna design to make the overall unit as small, discreet, and usable as possible.

At Heriot Watt we are passionate about our values and look to them to connect our people globally and to help us collaborate and celebrate our success through working together. Our research programmes can deliver real world impact which is achieved through the diversity of our international community and the recognition of creative talent that connects our global team. Our flourishing community will give you the freedom to challenge and to bring your enterprising mind and to help our partners with solutions that can be applied now and in the future. Join us and Heriot Watt will provide you with a platform to thrive and work in a way that also helps you live your life in balance with well-being and inclusiveness at the heart of our global community.

We seek a postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) for a period of 2 years (24 months).  The PDRA will be working within the auspices of the EPSRC project “Hypocoercivity-preserving discretisations” under the guidance of Professor Emmanuil Georgoulis. The nature and level of the research will necessitate the appointment of an experienced PDRA, who would need both good programming skills, including knowledge of C++ and MPI/OpenMP, as well as a strong mathematical background in the analysis of finite element methods. Some understanding of kinetic-type PDE theory and numerical analysis is highly desirable.  Any knowledge of CUDA programming is also highly welcome.