Research Associate

The School of Physics, Engineering and Technology brings physicists and engineers together to push the frontiers of knowledge, foster innovation and meet the grand challenges facing society. Our aim is to deliver world-leading research in both fundamental and applied areas whilst developing new technologies that work for the public good, in an environment where everyone can thrive.

As a School, equality, diversity, and inclusion are central to our culture and we strive to provide a working environment which allows all staff and students to contribute fully, to flourish, and to excel. We aim to ensure that there is a supportive and egalitarian culture at all levels and across all staff groups and offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, staff engagement forums, campus facilities and services to support staff from different backgrounds. We are proud to hold Juno Champion and Athena Swan bronze awards, which recognise our commitment to creating an equitable and fully inclusive environment in which staff and students can thrive. We aim to inspire young people to engage with science and engineering through our outreach work.

You will work on a new and exciting EPSRC-funded project, RIED (Re-Imagining Engineering Design: Growing Radical Cyber-Physical-Socio Phenotypes), to create a novel, smart, integrated design methodology that generates product and manufacturing systems simultaneously.

You will help create the new Design Theory and concepts that will evolution and physical interpret the genetic blueprint, how it develops into the phenotype (the product), with emphasis on continuous feedback from the environment. This requires discovery of effective encoding of the design specification and how that coding can be read, interpreted and understood.

Role

We are looking for an outstanding postdoctoral researcher with experience in evolutionary algorithms and their application to engineering designs, to work with us on the leading-edge research needed to achieve the RIED project’s ambitious objectives.

In this role you will,

1. design and implement novel evolutionary and developmental methods appropriate to manufacturing systems.
2. collaborate with the other project researchers to develop demonstrator applications.
3. conduct individual and collaborative research.
4. undertake appropriate organisational and administrative activities connected to the research project.

Skills, Experience & Qualification needed

• First degree and PhD in Computer Science, Electronic or Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, or similar technical area.
• Excellent knowledge and skills in evolutionary computation and their application to real-world problems.
• Excellent research software development skills, including continuous integration, testing, versioning, HPC/Cloud computing and integration with other tools.
• Ability to write up research work in high profile journals and engage in public dissemination.
• Highly developed communication skills to engage effectively with a wide-ranging audience, both orally and in writing, using a range of media.
• Experience of carrying out both independent and collaborative research.

Interview date: To be confirmed

For informal enquiries: Prof Andy Tyrrell on andy.tyrrell@york.ac.uk or the PET HR team on pet-hr@york.ac.uk.

The University strives to be diverse and inclusive – a place where we can ALL be ourselves.

We particularly encourage applications from people who identify as Black, Asian or from a Minority Ethnic background, who are underrepresented at the University.

We offer family friendly, flexible working arrangements, with forums and inclusive facilities to support our staff. #EqualityatYork

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