Research Associate/Fellow (Fixed-term) at University of Nottingham

April 3, 2024

Job Description

The Resilience Engineering Research Group within the Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham invite applications for enthusiastic researchers to work within a prestigious international team on a project funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation (LRF). 

This is an exciting and well-resourced project which aims to develop and establish the next generation of prediction methodologies and software tools to perform risk assessment for safety critical systems. The industrial relevance of these methods would be demonstrated through application in the nuclear, railway, and aerospace industries. These tools will overcome deficiencies in the currently available methodologies, which were developed in the 1970’s. The advances address the new technologies used in modern systems and the ways that they are now operated and maintained. 

The University of Nottingham leads the project, supported by academics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Our industrial partners include: Rolls Royce, BAE Systems, Network Rail, HS1, RSSB and FirstGroup. 

The Researcher will be responsible for developing Petri Net modelling approaches and safety assessment methodologies to predict the failure probability or frequency of industrial systems which operate as phased missions. These methods will be implemented in software for efficient utilisation.

Essential skills for the role include:

  • Experience of producing software for Petri Net model solutions 
  • A proven record of high quality publications

It would be highly advantageous if the candidate had: 

  • Familiarity with safety assessment and risk modelling 
  • Knowledge of the fault tree and event tree methods used in probabilistic safety assessment 
  • An understanding of modelling methods which solve Phased Missions 

It is expected that the successful candidate will have an undergraduate degree in an engineering discipline, mathematics, physics or computer science, and in addition, to hold (or to be shortly awarded) a PhD in a topic related to the modelling of engineering systems. 

The role will require significant interaction with our project collaborators, and the successful candidate must be able to evidence their ability to communicate and develop strong working relationships, within a variety of networks; academic, industrial, and student.

This is a full time (36.25 hours per week), fixed term position available for 12 months. Job share arrangements may be considered.

Requests for secondment from internal candidates may be considered on the basis that prior agreement has been sought from both your current line manager and the manager of your substantive post, if you are already undertaking a secondment role.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to Professor John Andrews, Email: John.Andrews@Nottingham.ac.uk. Please note that applications sent directly to this Email address will not be accepted.


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