Salary range: £35,308 - £43,155

FTE: 1

Term: Fixed (until 28/02/2025)

Closing Date: 25 May 2023

The new Made Smarter Research Centre for Smart, Collaborative Industrial Robotics is funded as one of the national new digital manufacturing research centres receiving nearly £25 million of UK government funding. The Robotics and Autonomous System (RAS) Laboratory within the department of Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management of the Faculty of Engineering is one of the five academic partners of the centre led by Loughborough University in collaboration with the Universities of Bristol, Warwick, Dundee and Cranfield. The Robotics and Autonomous System (RAS) lab offers three Research Associate posts and this post focus on Software Engineering for Design for X to meet the challenging manufacturing automation requirements of multiple industrial sectors. You will join our project as a key researcher and work along with a team of researchers and PhD students to design next generation smart manufacturing factory solutions, working in collaboration with other academic institutions and many industrial companies from multiple sectors. You will develop frontier research ideas in ensuring the design solutions to smart manufacturing factory systems comply with functional and legal requirements and implement these ideas in collaborating industrial partner’s manufacturing sites or at the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland, hosted at the University of Strathclyde. The post involves proposing a functional and legal framework for smart manufacturing system architectures, new approaches to configuring and reconfiguring manufacturing systems involving collaborative robotics for new tasks, feasibility study and demonstrator implementation, coordination and integration developed by a research team, and final prototype system testing and delivery.

As a Research Associate, under the general guidance of Director of RAS Group, you will develop research objectives of the centre and further proposals, play a lead role in relation to design studio for smart human robot collaboration design for the centre projects, conduct individual and/or collaborative research, contribute to the development of new research methods and implementation, identify sources of funding, and contribute to the securing of funds for research, including drafting grant proposals and planning for future proposals. You will write up research work for publication, individually or in collaboration with colleagues, and disseminate the results via peer reviewed journal publications and presentation at conferences. You will join external networks to share information and ideas, inform the development of research objectives and to identify potential sources of funding. You will collaborate with colleagues to ensure that research advances inform teaching effort and you will collaborate with colleagues on the development of knowledge exchange activities by, for example, participating in initiatives which establish research links with industry and influence public policy and the professions. You will contribute in a developing capacity to Department/School, Faculty and/or University administrative and management functions and committees.

To be considered for the role, you will be educated to a minimum of PhD level in either software engineering, artificial intelligence, engineering design or Laws for new technologies, including Automation, Robotics or relevant engineering discipline, or have significant relevant experience in addition to a relevant Master degree. You will have sufficient breadth or depth of knowledge in design for X, e.g. design for manufacturing automation, leading to design for legality and legal and regulatory principles and theory for smart factory design, manufacturing automation, systems, and a developing ability to conduct individual research work, to disseminate results and to prepare research proposals. You will have an ability to plan and organise your own workload effectively and an ability to work within a team environment.

For informal enquiries, please contact Prof. Xiu Yan, Professor x.yan@strath.ac.uk