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

The Research Associate will work within the EPSRC-funded U-Care project, an EPSRC-Funded project aimed at developing transformative light-based healthcare technologies.  The appointed candidate will be expected to exploit our extensive ultrafast laser microfabrication facilities to develop photonic solutions for a range of biomedical sensing applications. The applicant will work with others in the U-Care team, and will be expected to contribute to broader U-Care team meetings and other activities designed to support the project. 

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 post is for a period of 18 months but, after a satisfactory performance during the first 6 months, should the PDRA wish to extend their position, they  will be encouraged to lead or collaborate on new grant applications.

We are seeking to recruit an enthusiastic candidate to help deliver research in the area of disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change. The successful candidate will be employed for a period of 12 months, at 0.2 FTE, and will be required to assist the project lead Professor Harry Smith to fulfil the research obligations of a project entitled ‘IAA2022-Technical support for implementation of Medellin’s Comuna 8 (C8) integrated disaster risk management and climate change adaptation plan’. The research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Impact Acceleration Account.  

We are looking to recruit G8 Digital Technology Fellow to join the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences (EPS) at the Edinburgh campus of Heriot Watt University. The post holder will work collaboratively to develop and deliver digital training and outreach programmes to support future medicines manufacturing. They will be responsible for delivery of training and education using tools such as virtual reality and mixed reality (VR/MR) to drive digital transformation and net zero practices for educators, industry and NHS. They will train diverse cohorts of learners spanning the entire careers pipeline for industry, academia and NHS, sharing best practice with partners. 

The post holder will possess an understanding of dynamic training needs for diverse learner groups, as well as strong interest in developing new ways of thinking in training delivery and training data analysis, to enable growth of the medicines manufacturing workforce and NHS. They will work with a nationwide consortium across the project, lead on digital strategies for inclusive and accessible learning, and make a major contribution to strategic discussions around digital transformation in education.   

The successful applicant will join the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Biophysics and Bioengineering (IB3) as part of the Innovate UK-funded RESILIENCE Medicines Manufacturing Skill Centre and will also work closely with the team at the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC), hosted by the University of Strathclyde.

The Research Associate will work on the EPSRC (Part of the UK national research council) project EP/V006312/1 “3D Laser Beam Shaping: The True Potential of Laser Based Manufacturing“. The project aims to combine novel refractive optic design, interference based optical beam shaping and fundamental laser-material interaction studies to develop a new range of focussing optics able to fully control the laser intensity profile in three dimensions. 

Applications for these novel beam shapes include ultra-fast laser material interactions (welding, waveguide inscription etc.), rapid drilling of arbitrarily shaped holes as part of semiconductor processing, and medical (surgical) applications. 

The project is in collaboration with four partners: (i) PowerPhotonic Ltd and (ii) Gooch & Housego Plc. provide expertise in the manufacture of optics including world leading, unique capabilities in manufacturing free form optics. (iii) Oxford Lasers provide expertise in laser systems engineering and, along with (iv) the St James’s University Hospital in Leeds are potential end users, with specific application requirements for these optics. 

The applicant will be expected to work directly with Dr Richard Carter (PI), Prof. Jonathan Shephard (CoI), Prof. Duncan Hand (CoI), PhD students and a second PDRA already working on the project. This post will include a combination of experimental optical (laser materials interaction) work and/or theoretical beam propagation modelling. 

We are looking for a creative and highly motivated researcher willing to work closely with our U-Care research team. Regular communication with, and reporting to, our partners is an important part of the role.  General tasks will involve engineering development; analysis and interpretation of data; daily oversight of the activities of postgraduate and undergraduate project students in the laboratory; communication with other investigators involved in this collaborative project; preparation of scientific papers; presentation of research at conferences. 

Based at Heriot-Watt University’s Edinburgh campus, the National Robotarium is supported by £21 million from the UK Government, and £1.4 million from the Scottish Government as part of the Edinburgh and Southeast Scotland City Region Deal.  The National Robotarium will translate cutting-edge research into technologies to create disruptive innovation in an expanding global market. This is an exciting opportunity, where the role-holder will have the ability to play a crucial role in a research team for a large commercial project, researching contact-implicit loco-manipulation as part of the RoMI lab group.

The Robot Motor Intelligence (RoMI) (www.romi.org) is a young lab that is part of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and Heriot-Watt University. It is dedicated to the development of motor/athletic intelligence in legged robots. Our mission is to identify computational principles that describe motor and perceptive units. We advance numerical optimization for robotics, optimal control, contact physics and deep learning to empower legged robots to perform rich-sensory and multi-contact motions in real time, including in unstructured environments.