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

The PDRA will be working within the auspices of the WIDERA consortium project BEYOND (Beyond Bad Apples: Towards A Behavioural And Evidence-Based Approach To Promote Research Ethics And Research Integrity In Europe) under the guidance of Dr Daniele Fanelli, in a nascent Metascience Lab located in the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. With the general objective of advancing Metascience and helping the progress of all disciplines, the PDRA will actively contribute to the development and testing of new methods to incorporate complexity into our understanding of scientific practices and research integrity (see “How to apply” for relevant references). Depending on the candidate’s interests, the specific work may take a more theoretical, methodological, or empirical orientation. The nature and level of the research requires strong quantitative skills and experience with analytical or computational modelling, or with quantitative analyses.

The PDRA will be working within the auspices of the WIDERA consortium project iRISE (Improving Reproducibility In SciencE) under the guidance of Dr Daniele Fanelli, in a nascent Metascience Lab located in the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. With the general objective of advancing Metascience and helping the progress of all disciplines, the PDRA will actively contribute to the development and testing of new methods to incorporate complexity into our understanding of research reproducibility (see “How to apply” for relevant references). Depending on the candidate’s interests, the specific work may take a more theoretical, methodological, or empirical orientation. The nature and level of the research requires strong quantitative skills and experience with analytical and/or computational modelling, or quantitative analyses.

The Research Associate positions offer the successful candidates an outstanding opportunity to develop their research career, by engaging with a close-knit international community of researchers on a range of well-funded research projects.  The successful candidates will report directly to the Principal Investigator of the projects, Prof. Phil Greening, who is also the Director of Heriot-Watt University’s Centre for Logistics & Sustainability (CLS). Each RA will be responsible for leading the agent-based modelling activity in a project, working closely with other modellers in the team The RAs will be important members of the logistics modelling team and are expected to integrate this research into the broader logistics research carried out by the CLS.  Agent-based modelling of the freight and logistics system is the central integrating element of the CSRF’s five-year research programme. 

The PDRA will work on the Medical Research Council (MRC) funded project is “Developing Novel Technology for Data Driven Clinical Decision Making” MR/Y007816/1. The project aims to combine ultra-precision laser ablation with metabolic profiling via mass spectrometry providing pathological information to the surgeon to stratify patients and inform on more effective, targeted treatments that prevent recurrence. This is a collaboration with Imperial College London and The University of Leeds.Glioblastoma (GBM) brain tumours are deadly and incurable and therefore novel and more effective treatments are urgently needed. The extent to which a GBM tumour can be removed drastically impacts patient survival, but surgeons must be extremely careful not to damage normal brain tissue as this can severely affect quality of life. Unfortunately, some cancer cells remain and are treated with radiochemotherapy but this subsequent treatment only delays tumour regrowth, and patient demise, by an average of 3 months. This projects long term goals is to develop technology to simultaneously tackle two aspects that currently hinder effective GBM treatment by: 1) developing a new ultra-short pulsed laser-tissue interaction regime that can precisely remove cancer cells, with reduced thermal impact on normal brain cells whilst simultaneously optimising the “ejection plume” from the ablation site for, 2) use with in situ metabolic profiling equipment (Mass Spectrometry) that can feedback pathological information (contained in the ejection plume during ablation) to the surgeon and be used to stratify patients and inform on more effective, targeted treatments that prevent recurrence.

The Research Associate/Fellow post offer the successful candidates an outstanding opportunity to develop their research career, by engaging with a close-knit international community of researchers on a range of well-funded research projects. The successful candidates will report directly to the Principal Investigator Prof Phil Greening and be responsible for conducting data science tasks related to a range of data sources provided for the research portfolio (data cleaning, data analysis, data validation across a range of projects). They will be important members of the logistics modelling team and will be expected to liaise closely with other team members to ensure that data related tasks can be integrated into the broader logistics research carried out by the centre.  The team utilises data sourced from industrial partners and government as the basis for advanced logistics modelling. As the programme expands, this is becoming an increasingly important role in the research team. 

We are looking for outstanding candidates with a PhD in electrical  engineering, applied mathematics, physics, computer science, or a  related discipline.‍ The ideal candidates will have expertise in computational imaging, with: (i) a theory focus (algorithms for image reconstruction, including calibration and uncertainty quantification), with particular interest in deep learning, optimisation, or Bayesian sampling methods; and/or (ii) an application focus (from astronomical to  medical imaging, specifically radio-astronomical, magnetic resonance, or  ultrasound imaging modalities), including simulation work and real data processing. Competence in specific algorithmic approaches such as plug-and-play methods and diffusion models, or specific applications such as Very Long Baseline Interferometry and black hole imaging in astronomy, or low field magnetic resonance imaging in medicine, is of particular interest. ‍The postdoctoral researchers will be committed to cutting-edge  research for precision robust scalable computational imaging, under the  supervision of Prof. Wiaux and in collaboration with UoE, EPFL, Paris-Saclay, MIT, SARAO, or CHUV. Outstanding candidates are also welcome to propose their own research project in the broad context of deep learning for computational imaging. Upon outstanding performance, postholders can be granted  opportunities for secondments in a collaborating institution and/or to  co-supervise a PhD student. A secondary affiliation to EPFL or UoE may be offered to candidates with the appropriate profile.

The successful candidates are expected to develop cutting edge deep learning models for multi-scale flow modelling of CO2 in subsurface reservoirs. Two aspects are of special interests (a) pore-to-core scale upscaling (b) upscaling of reactive flow processes. In addition, the successful candidates will contribute to a wide range of AI applications in subsurface flow modelling including (a) stochastic generation of porous media realizations using deep generative models (b) deep learning based property prediction using various architectures (c) Deep learning based proxy modelling with physics based losses and built-in model constrains (e) Effective optimization techniques for physics constrained implicit neural models (f) Efficient coupling of deep learning models to numerical solvers for hybrid CO2 flow modelling. The developed machine learning techniques will be open-sourced and be validated across a wide range of applications and on experimental data and direct numerical simulations generated by the project team.

The Quantum Photonics Laboratory seeks a talented scientist to undertake research on device fabrication, optical spectroscopy, and quantum optics of 2D van der Waals moiré materials. The projects will be conducted within the framework of a University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society which aims to drive forward programmable moiré quantum materials. Significant goals include the engineering and the optical characterisation of strongly correlated states in 2D moiré heterostructures.