[Event at CIG] Permanent research-intensive academic post: Verification and Validation of Autonomous Systems, at the National Robotarium, Edinburgh, UK

[Ekaterina Komendantskaya]

*... Apologies for multiple postings, please help to distribute to
potential applicants in your research area*



                   ASSISTANT PROFESSOR / ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
                                          in COMPUTER SCIENCE
                            ("BICENTENARY RESEARCH LEADER")
             HERIOT-WATT UNIVERSITY, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, UK
                         SALARY: £60,000 -£42,000 per annum
                   START DATE: FROM MARCH 2022 (NEGOTIABLE)
             CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: 15 DECEMBER 2021

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Heriot-Watt University has established a reputation for world-class
teaching and leading-edge, relevant research,
which has made it one of the top UK universities for innovation, business
and industry.

To celebrate our bicentenary of pioneering research, we recruit outstanding
research academics, *Bicentenary Research Leaders*,
some of whom will be associated with the new National Robotarium (NR) and
the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics (ECR).
We welcome applicants for this post and in particular research leaders in
the field of trustworthy autonomous systems.
As both trust and autonomy can take many forms, we are interested in a
range of research areas, leading examples being:

   - Verification (automated and interactive theorem proving,
   (probabilistic) model checking, SMT solvers),
   - Validation (programming languages infrastructure, integrated
   simulation),
   - Security for Complex Autonomous Systems (robustness against
   adversaries, security and autonomous cars)
   - Interpretable/Explainable/Property-driven Machine Learning.

The "Bicentenary Research Leader" positions are permanent
research-intensive posts, with the expectation that the successful
candidates will devote most of their time to develop cutting-edge research
ideas and lead large research projects.

ABOUT OUR TEAM:

The Department of Computer Science is internationally renowned for its
world-class research across a number of areas,
including artificial intelligence and machine learning, data integration,
knowledge representation, visualization and analytics,
natural language processing, formal methods, logic, type theory,
programming languages, parallel computation,
human-computer and human-robot interaction, and cybersecurity.

Jointly with the School of Engineering at Heriot-Watt and the School of
Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, we host
the center for doctoral training “Edinburgh Centre for Robotics” and the
UK’s first National Robotarium, that together form a
£129M joint venture, a center of excellence for AI research on an
international scale, and a research and innovation hub
with >150 staff and PhD students. In RCUK’s recent Grand Challenges Scheme:
Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS),
our academics form core teams in 2 out of 7 TAS nodes (each node is
supported by a £3M research grant). The two nodes
stand for “Trust” and “Governance” in Autonomous Systems.   Our grant
funding in this area has also grown through being
awarded, jointly with the School Of Engineering at HWU an EPSRC Industrial
Strategy Challenge Strategy Fund for
the Robotics Hub for Offshore Robotics for Certification of Assets (ORCA)
worth £14.6M, which is one of the largest
industrial strategy challenge funds awards in Scotland.

The department has strong collaboration with Industry. Since 2014, we have
undertaken 107 projects with industrial partners,
through our doctoral training centers (40 industrial partners), the ORCA
hub (30 industrial partners), and the TAS nodes.
Among our collaborators are Amazon Research, BP, Chevron, FiveAI, Horiba
Mira, Imandra, Kawasaki, Kuka Robotics,
Lloyds, Schlumberger, and many others.

The School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences has an Athena SWAN Bronze
Award and is committed to an equality charter,
which includes having a diverse and inclusive workforce, and to offering
equality of opportunity to all
(see
https://www.hw.ac.uk/schools/mathematical-computer-sciences/about/athena-swan.htm
).
We particularly encourage applications from women, and we welcome requests
for flexible working arrangements and
endeavour to accommodate them, whenever possible.

For further information about this position, please consult the university
job portal
<https://enzj.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX/job/1658/?utm_medium=jobshare>
.
For informal discussions about the position or the department of Computer
Science please contact
Prof. Ekaterina Komendantskaya (Head of Computer Science) at ek19 at hw.ac.uk