Research Assistant or Postdoctoral Research Associate in Electronic Engineering

Working at Durham University

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As one of the UK's leading universities, Durham is an incredible place to define your career. The University is located within a beautiful historic city, home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and surrounded by stunning countryside. Our talented scholars and researchers from around the world are tackling global issues and making a difference to people's lives.

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We want our University to be a place where people can be free to be themselves, no matter what their identity or background. Together, we celebrate difference, value one another and are each responsible for creating an inclusive community that is respectful and fair for all.

Find out more about the benefits of working at the University and what it is like to live and work in the Durham area on our Why Durham? information page.

The Department

The Department of Engineering at Durham University is recognised as being one of the very best in the UK. In the Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise of 2021, the Department had 95% of publications rated as 3*/4*, and all impact case studies graded 3*/4*. The Engineering Department demonstrates significant depth of research excellence across a range of disciplines, with activities that are currently concentrated around three Research Challenges (Sustainable Infrastructure, Future Energy Systems and Advanced Materials, Electronics and Communications) and eight Research Nodes which group staff under technical expertise and interest (see https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/engineering/research/).

We are particularly proud of the collaborative interdisciplinary nature of our research, which also includes strong industrial partnerships. The strategic vision for the Department includes a major growth over the next five years, with a significant enhancement of the research challenge portfolio and a drive to enrich our undergraduate, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research provision.

The Department is committed to an ethos of research-led teaching at all levels of our taught programmes, and is ranked 4th in the Complete University Guide, 5th in the Guardian University Guide and 6th in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022 in the UK for General Engineering. The Department has improved its NSS scores year on year, is currently 4th in the UK, being in the top quartile overall, and specifically for teaching, assessment and feedback, and organisation.

We are a scholarly community that is open, supportive, collegiate, representative and diverse: our commitment to this is expressed through the work of the Department's Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing Committee, and our Athena Swan Silver Award.

The Role

We are seeking either a Grade 7 PhD holder, or Grade 6 graduate to fill this role. Owing to the available funding, the contract length will differ depending on which role the successful applicant is appointed to.

In both cases we are seeking a highly motivated and ambitious researcher with a strong background and experience in embedded system design to work on cutting-edge research in the development of wireless sensing transponders for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The project will be carried out in close collaboration with Procter & Gamble (P&G) and is funded by the EPSRC Impact Accelerator Account (IAA).

This is a fixed-term role for 6 months at Grade 7, or 8.5 months at Grade 6, with an immediate start date, due to the project's focused scope.

The project

Traditional product inspections and monitoring during research and manufacturing in the industrial sector can often be subjective, highly manual, and invasive. This project aims to address these challenges by revolutionizing product monitoring through the adaptation of a battery-less, Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled wireless monitoring system. Initially developed for livestock health and wellbeing monitoring, this scalable and cost-effective system will be transformed into an innovative Industry 4.0 solution tailored to P&G's logistics requirements. The adapted system will facilitate real-time, non-invasive temperature and humidity monitoring, offering adaptability to specific logistics needs. By collaborating closely with P&G's logistics and technical teams, the project seeks to validate the system's proof of concept for their particular use cases.

Grade 6 Research Assistant key responsibilities:

• To write up results of research work, present information on research progress and outcomes to bodies supervising research in a clear and accurate manner.
• To analyse or undertake basic research by deciding how best to apply existing methodology according to overall context and objectives.
• To deal with problems that may affect the achievement of research objectives and deadlines by discussing with the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder and offering creative or innovative solutions.
• To contribute to the planning of research projects.
• To assist in contributing to support student projects on the use of research methods and equipment.
• To be actively involved in the research and innovation of the wireless sensing system, from design and prototyping to testing stages along with the industrial partner, in order to meet the target requirements.

• To prepare and deliver presentations on research outputs/activities to audiences which may include: research sponsors, academic and non-academic audiences.
• To publish high quality outputs, including papers for submission to peer reviewed journals and papers for presentation at conferences and workshops under the direction of the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder.
• To assist with the development of research objectives and proposals.
• To conduct individual and collaborative research projects under the direction of the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder.
• To work with the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder and other colleagues in the research group, as appropriate, to identify areas for research, develop new research methods and extend the research portfolio.
• To deal with problems that may affect the achievement of research objectives and deadlines by discussing with the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder and offering creative or innovative solutions.
• To plan and manage own research activity, research resources in collaboration with others and contribute to the planning of research projects.
• To deliver training in research techniques/approaches to peers, visitors and students as appropriate.
• To be involved in student supervision, as appropriate, and assist with the assessment of the knowledge of students.
• To conduct research on the innovation of the wireless sensing system to meet the target requirements, focusing on temperature and humidity range, accuracy, size, and reading range.
• To design and implement necessary hardware and software modifications to align with the new specifications, targeting a cost of