Research Associate in Autonomy for Surgical Robotics

Fixed term contract - 2 years.

Full time - 35 hours per week

The opportunity:

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 surgical robotics addressing two parallel concerns. Firstly, the post holder will work on simulation and skill quantification methods to understand human expert skill in detail, enabling improved training and providing the basis for subsequent automation. Secondly, the post holder will develop new methods for task level autonomy in surgical robotic systems. This represents one of the main application themes within the centre, alongside assistive technology for activities of daily living, and autonomous vehicles. 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 duties associated with this post will include:

• Undertaking a specific role in the research project under supervision (approx. 25%)
• Taking responsibility for some elements of the planned research (approx. 20%)
• Planning and carrying out a work programme appropriate to the research activity (approx. 20%)
• Developing own research portfolio in related areas (approx. 10%)
• Contributing to the writing of research grants (approx. 10%)
• Contributing to dissemination and publication of personal and/or research teams findings as appropriate. (approx. 10%)
• Contribute to learning and teaching through activities such as project supervision, tutoring and marking (limited to no more than 5% on an annualised basis). 

Your skills and attributes for success:

Essential:

• A PhD (or near completion) in robotics, preferably with a focus on robot learning
• An excellent track record of publications in top-tier journals (e.g. IEEE Trans. or broad-interest science venues) and/or conferences in AI (e.g. IJCAI, AAAI, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR), robotics (e.g. R:SS, CoRL, ICRA), or allied areas
• Excellent proven experience of developing field robotics systems involving robotic manipulation 
• Ability to work effectively as part of a team, to meet deadlines, and to report on project progress
• Ability to communicate complex information clearly, orally and in writing.

Desirable:

• Research experience with methods for learning from demonstration or inverse optimal control
• Research experience with real-time perception and scene understanding methods based on state-of-the-art machine learning methods
• Hands-on experience of designing and conducting field experiments, including human subject studies 
• Demonstrated experience of the development and management of projects involving multiple stakeholders.

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