Research Assistant/Associate - Second-life Battery Storage for Net Zero Grids

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Salary
Research Assistant: £32,546 - £34,132 per annum.
Research Associate: £35,116 per annum.

The role
This is an excellent opportunity to join leading team in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, School of Engineering, Newcastle University.

The EPSRC Northern Net Zero Accelerator (NNZA) project aims the adoption of unsupervised learning techniques to cluster second-life EV batteries for PV solar and wind energy storage systems.

The interdisciplinary idea translation is based on the existing knowledge within Newcastle University from the two research areas i.e., Intelligent Sensing and Net-zero Electrification. The knowledge/expertise on in-line testing and characterization of batteries from projects with the EVOEMs i.e., Nissan, Renault, Daimler, project will be leveraged. Moreover, knowledge on data-driven decision making from The ReLiB Project (Faraday Institution's flagship, £18m, research project on challenges of re-using and comprehensively recycling lithium-ion batteries), will be also applied in this project. The knowledge/expertise on Intelligent Multimodal Sensing achieved from UKRI/EPSRC/Innovate-UK/Dstl funded projects will be leveraged for this work i.e., unsupervised learning, data clustering including statistical modelling and estimation, noise and heterogeneous information fusion, and multiple-source localization and tracking.

You should be educated to at least MSc (or equivalent degree qualification) in EEE (PhD award essential for Research Associate). You should have a demonstrable record of signal processing/machine learning algorithms.

This position is available immediately on a full-time, fixed-term basis for 6 months, from the contract start date.

All informal enquiries welcome to:
Dr Mohsen Naqvi (mohsen.naqvi@ncl.ac.uk).

For more information about PI, please click the following link: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/engineering/staff/profile/mohsennaqvi.html.

For more information about the School of Engineering and our research, please click the following link: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/engineering/.

Key Accountabilities

• Work with the team Dr Mohsen Naqvi (PI) in Intelligent Sensing and Communications Research Group, Dr Simon Lambert (CoI) and Dr Mazhar Abbas (CoI) in Electrical Power Research Group, within the School of Engineering.
• Learn to use EC-lab software available in Electrical Power Testing (EPT) Lab as the second-life batteries' characterization data is archived as EC-lab files.
• Process retired batteries' data. The second life-batteries and sources to get data are available under the existing project agreements.
• Apply unsupervised learning techniques to screening batteries based on the preprocessing and features/parameters extraction.
• Design of distributed control system based on clusters, meta data, and energy generation (PV, Wind) process.
• Use unique multi-sensor research lab facility. In the state-of-the-art lab design, the multimodal sensors are operating in parallel, completely time-synchronised and specifically the Infrared sensors are working in overlapping field of view.

Qualifications

• PhD (awarded or close to submission) in EEE, or a closely related discipline. (Essential for Research Associate).
• MSc (or equivalent) in Signal Processing or Machine Learning Subjects. (Essential for Research Assistant / Desirable for Research Associate).

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