17 Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

We are looking for a researcher to join our group at the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC), belonging to the Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems (ICMCS) of the University of Edinburgh. 

The appointed Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) will utilise the laser-heated diamond anvil cell approach to synthesise novel and technologically relevant nitrogen-based materials. The PDRA will employ the newly-developed single-crystal X-ray diffraction of powder-like samples for the structural characterisation of nitrides, along with Raman spectroscopy measurements. This programme of research will be conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Bayreuth (Germany), the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (France) as well as the University of Linköping (Sweden) and has been funded by the UKRI through a Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF).

The University of Edinburgh and the University of Cambridge have been awarded a new grant to study the effectiveness of restoration in African savannas. This new project will contribute to the SEOSAW network, a partnership dedicated to understanding how African savannas are responding to global change and how these ecosystems can best be managed and restored.

We are seeking a highly talented, independent and motivated candidate for a 22-month fixed term position. You will work as part of a team to collect, clean and analyse data on savanna vegetation change across Africa. You will work at research sites that are part of the SEOSAW network, collecting data to continue long term observations of vegetation change, and in some cases, establishing new plots to compare restored and unrestored savannas. Your work will focus on the vegetation and soils data and you will work alongside a post doctoral researcher who will lead on bird diversity data. You will undertake data analysis to reveal patterns of vegetation change and to compare restored and unrestored savannas, feeding back information to restoration practitioners about the effectiveness of different land management approaches.

This post is full-time (35 hours per week) based alongside the SEOSAW office and Casey Ryan at the University of Edinburgh, King’s Buildings and will require extensive travel for fieldwork. 

We are looking for a Research Associate (RA) in Modelling Soft Matter, Interfacial Phenomena, and Multiphase Flows to work with Prof Halim Kusumaatmaja in the Institute for Multiscale Thermofluids, School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. 

Prof Kusumaatmaja’s group is interested in a wide range of interfacial and multiphase flows, including drop dynamics, wetting on structured surfaces, microfluidics, wet granular matter, porous media flows, and phase change phenomena (e.g., evaporation, condensation, icing). The appointed RA should have strong expertise and experience in computer simulations in the areas of fluid dynamics, soft matter, and interfacial phenomena. They will develop suitable simulation techniques for multiphase and interfacial flows (potentially including multi-physics coupling to solid particle dynamics, phase change, and complex rheology), and leverage these tools to provide new physical insights. 

Upon the appointment of Prof Kusumaatmaja as the Jason Reese Chair at the University of Edinburgh, the group is keen to develop stronger research collaborations with industry partners in the fields of soft matter, interfacial phenomena, and soft matter. Hence, as part of the role, the RA is further expected to collaborate and develop links with new and existing industry partners. There are also opportunities to interact with other groups across Edinburgh, including the Edinburgh Complex Fluid Partnership.

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate position in the history of mathematics, within the School of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. The post is available from 1st September 2025, for 24 months, with a possible extension of at most one year. The starting date can be negotiated. It is a fixed-term, full-time contract. The position is attached to the project “Rethinking the history and the historiography of mathematical symbolism,” which is supported by the British Academy’s Global Professorship held by Karine Chemla (Programme 2023, Award reference: GP23\100312). The project is described here, and the applicant is expected to contribute to at least one of the themes on which the project will focus in the next three years. 

The History of mathematics group at the School of Mathematics of The University of Edinburgh currently consists of Karine Chemla. The project is developed in relation with other partners at The University of Edinburgh (Michael Barany, Richard Oosterhoff), and, at the international level, with researchers such as Agathe Keller, Taro Tokutake (SPHERE, CNRS—University Paris Cité), Toni Malet (Institut d’Història de la Ciència, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and Zhou Xiaohan (Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Beijing), and we will develop further cooperations. In addition to working in collaboration with the grant-holder (Chemla), successful candidates will be encouraged to develop and pursue their own research, as described in the project for which they will have been offered the position. These positions also come with travel and research budgets.

You will conduct research into the development and delivery of neighbourhood-based energy retrofit and heat decarbonisation programmes, with a focus on relational and place-based aspects. This will involve working with communities and delivery agencies to review interventions, delivery mechanisms, outcomes and the role of socio-cultural relations in one, or more, UK case study location. 

This position offers an experienced researcher the opportunity to join the internationally-leading, multi-disciplinary UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). UKERC has occupied a unique space in the UK’s energy research landscape since 2004, creating and applying interdisciplinary, whole systems research to provide high quality and timely evidence and analysis, and deliver impact. In its fifth phase (2024-2029) UKERC will focus on the multifaceted challenge of delivering the energy transition; conducting a programme of interdisciplinary research on how to transition to a sustainable and inclusive net zero energy system whilst enhancing security and affordability, and working with key stakeholders to provide analysis and insights relevant to the challenges facing decision-makers in government, industry and civil society, helping accelerate an equitable transition.

A Postdoctoral Research Associate position is available in the research group of Dr. Helen Alexander (Institute of Ecology & Evolution, University of Edinburgh). We are looking for a researcher interested in microbial evolution and ecology, for a wet lab-based role. Applicants should have (or be close to completing) a PhD in microbiology, evolutionary biology, or a related field. The ideal candidate will have strong skills in both experimental techniques and quantitative data analysis.

The project focuses on emergence of antibiotic resistance in bacterial populations, using in vitro experiments (primarily with Pseudomonas aeruginosa). We are interested in how antibiotic dose, the biotic environment, and timing of appearance of resistant mutants, affect the emergence of resistance (i.e. outgrowth from initially rare cells to a large population) under antibiotic treatment. Previously, we found that the surrounding antibiotic-sensitive population plays a dual role, either inhibiting or facilitating emergence of resistance under different conditions. Now, we aim to investigate temporal dynamics, especially how timing of appearance of resistant mutants impacts their chance of emergence. This research could also be extended in other related directions, such as investigating mechanisms underlying ecological interactions or testing similar questions in other bacterial species or antibiotic classes.

The successful applicant will join an interdisciplinary research group studying microbial population dynamics and evolution (https://biology.ed.ac.uk/alexander). The post-holder will be expected to work with a high degree of independence in designing, conducting, and analysing experiments, and will be encouraged to contribute their own ideas to the project direction. They will be expected to disseminate their results in papers, conference presentations, and/or other outputs, and will be supported in career development. 

This post is advertised as full-time (35 hours per week); however, we are open to considering part-time or flexible working patterns.

This Research Associate position will contribute to the SELECT project within the Institute for Imaging, Data and Communications at the University of Edinburgh, which is funded by ERC and in collaboration with colleagues at multiple overseas institutions.

This role is UE07 and is available on a fixed-term basis for up to 24 months.

A full list of main responsibilities and the knowledge, skills and experience required for the role can be found in the full job description below.

This position is affiliated with the UKRI APRIL AI Hub that aspires to develop AI tools to accelerate innovation across semiconductor technologies, novel microchip designs and system architectures – leading to faster, cheaper, greener and overall, more power-efficient electronics. As one of nine UKRI funded AI Hubs, this is a highly visible programme both nationally and internationally. 

The post-holder will work closely with a team of talented researchers and the APRIL operations team to lead the development of novel AI capabilities, tools and methodologies that can enhance the productivity of engineers in designing, developing and testing advanced electronic devices and systems. More specifically, the post-holder should have experience in applying but also developing AI tools that can design and execute experiments in search of the best manufacturing parameter settings to create electron devices with optimum performance and yield; spanning from optimal “device recipe” prediction to automated testing and yield assessment. 

The post-holder will have the ability to engage with world-leading experts across AI and electronics both at Edinburgh and in other UK higher education (HE) institutions but also industrial partners to ensure relevance of their Research in addressing state-of-art challenges in electronics. 

The successful candidate will have experience of project development and project leadership in a research context, together with excellent communication, presentation, and organisational skills. They will enjoy working in a dynamic environment and be able to work on their own initiative as well as being an active team member. The role will report to the APRIL Hub Director (Principal Investigator), with on-going engagement with other researchers in the Hub as well as academic leads. 

This post will be part of the Centre for AI for Assistive Autonomy, a mission-driven research centre established using a UKRI Turing AI World Leading Researcher Fellowship awarded to Prof Subramanian Ramamoorthy. 

The post-holder will be the lead researcher anchoring laboratory activities in the area of Artificial Intelligence for autonomous vehicles, with a focus on human-centred settings including shared autonomy and autonomous operation in crowded urban environments. This represents one of the main application themes within the centre, alongside assistive technology in healthcare domains. This work benefits from parallel work of a foundations team, whose focus will be on fundamental investigations into generative modelling of the full stack of human behaviour, from sensorimotor control to higher level cognitive decision making, to enable the development of person-centred and teachable autonomous systems. 

The post holder will be supervised by the Centre Director (Ramamoorthy). The post holder will also have the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in a wide range of specialties across the University, including in machine learning and vision (e.g. Fisher, Mac Aodha, Bilen, Sevilla-Lara, Vergari), probabilistic programming (e.g. Narayanaswamy, Kammar, Belle), natural language understanding and interaction (e.g. Lascarides, Lapata, Gal), computational cognitive science and neuroscience (e.g. Lucas, Hennig, Nolan, Rajendran), as well as in robotics and neurotechnology (e.g. Vijayakumar, Nazarpour) and engineering of novel sensing and devices (Prodromakis, Koutsos, Amjadi). Beyond the university, the Centre will pursue collaborations with international teams including at The University of Texas at Austin (Stone), Stanford University (Kochenderfer), University of Bremen (Beetz) and Monash University (Burke).

The Centre will also have a strong industrial partner network, including Fourier Intelligence, Honda Research Europe, Shadow Robot, Sony Europe and other organisations who will be engaged in the Centre’s work at all stages, with the expectation that this network grows over time as the Centre’s work grows and begins to have broader impacts.

The central purpose of the job is to investigate human-centred AI methods to enable novel applications including shared autonomy and autonomous operation in crowded urban environments. 

In Run 3 of the LHC, the recently upgraded LHCb experiment has already collected a larger dataset of heavy flavour decays than any previous experiment. We are looking for Postdoctoral Research Associates to work on exploitation of this dataset. The Edinburgh LHCb group a wide range of physics interests and has made substantial contributions to the study of CP violation and lifetimes in the B meson system, spectroscopy and exotic states, heavy quark production, flavour changing neutral currents, charmless b-decays, charm mixing and CP violation as well as electroweak physics. The group also holds significant detector responsibilities, including maintenance and operation of the Ring Imaging Cherenkov detectors, and in the RICH detector and the Mighty Tracker project for LHCb Upgrade II.

You will take a leading role in the group’s wide physics program which encompasses the search for CP violation in decays such as Bs->PhiPhi, b-hadron lifetimes, rare b-decays as well as CP violation in the charm sector.

You will collaborate with partners beyond the University of Edinburgh including students and staff from other universities and contacts from non-academic stakeholders. You will be encouraged to develop new links

The School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh is committed to encouraging equality and diversity among our workforce, and eliminating discrimination. The School strives to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace for all and we are looking to actively diversify our staff. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates and in particular encourage applications from people of colour, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people and other minority and under-represented groups. We aim to ensure that our culture and systems support flexible and family-friendly working, as evidenced by our Juno Champion and Athena SWAN Silver awards.

This Research Associate position will contribute to the BResilient project (Bamboo as a vital ingredient in reforestation strategies to promote resilient and sustainable communities and enterprises in Madagascar). The project is led by the Institute for Infrastructure and Environment at the University of Edinburgh, and in collaboration with colleagues at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, ESSA, University of Antananarivo, Madagascar and Liverpool John Moores University.

The researcher will perform an analysis of available climate observations, including reanalysis data, to build a comprehensive characterisation of regional climate, including the occurrence of extremes (e.g., tropical cyclones) and their impact of regional resources (e.g., forests). By performing an analysis of future climate model projections, they will determine how the climate will evolve, and whether the frequency and severity of extreme events change with time. They will also estimate uncertainties, and the extent to which changes are anthropogenically driven as opposed to being part of natural fluctuations. The researcher will also make use of remote sensing data (e.g., vegetation and land-surface properties) to better constrain model-simulated climate. Use of machine learning methods (e.g., to improve model-based estimates or to provide further mechanistic insights into future climate projections) is strongly encouraged. 

A full list of main responsibilities and the knowledge, skills and experience required for the role can be found in the full job description below. If you require any further information or wish to have an informal conversation about the role, please reach out to Thomas Reynolds ([email protected]) and Massimo Bollasina ([email protected]).

This position is affiliated with the UKRI APRIL AI Hub that aspires to develop AI tools to accelerate innovation across semiconductor technologies, novel microchip designs and system architectures – leading to faster, cheaper, greener and overall, more power-efficient electronics. As one of nine UKRI funded AI Hubs, this is a highly visible programme both nationally and internationally. 

The post-holder will work closely with a team of talented researchers and the APRIL operations team to support the development of novel AI capabilities, tools and methodologies that can enhance the productivity of engineers in designing, developing and testing advanced electronic devices and systems. More specifically, the post-holder will be able to develop and introduce AI tools into commercially available  circuit design tools that can autonomously synthetise circuits and systems architectures. The aim is to drastically reduce the design time and optimise the transfer of known topologies into new CMOS technologies. 

The post-holder will have the ability to engage with world-leading experts across AI and electronics both at Edinburgh and in other UK higher education (HE) institutions but also industrial partners to ensure relevance of their Research in addressing state-of-art challenges in electronics.