Research Associate: AI at the Edge

Edinburgh – Central Area, Midlothian, United Kingdom (100% On-campus)

Job Info

• Job Identification:   8752
• Locations:    Informatics Forum, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, GB(100% On-campus)
• Apply:    Before11/29/2023, 07:59 AM
• Health and Safety Requirements:   No key hazards identified for this post
• Criminal Record Check:   No criminal record check required
• Contract Type:   Fixed Term
• Number of Openings:   1
• Grade:   UE07
• Organization:   Edinburgh University Group
• Department:   Informatics
• Job Function:   Researcher
• Job Schedule:   Full time

Job Description

Grade UE07: £37,099 to £44,263 per annum

College of Science and Engineering / School of Informatics       

Full-time: 35 hours per week

Fixed-term:  for 2.5 years

The School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh is inviting applications for a Research Associate in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for Edge Devices and Environments.

The Opportunity:

Machine Learning (ML) has a dramatic impact on our daily lives. The explosion in ML, however, is built on the back of the development of computer systems able to train and deploy ever more powerful models.

Systems design fundamentally determines ML performance and capability. This is true for internet-scale ML and artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, more recently, it is especially evident in distributed, device-oriented, specialised and potentially mobile systems.  These more distributed “edge” settings provide many important challenges for the development of ML methods – methods must be able to be efficient, robust, online, adaptive, personalised, secure and private. This is the challenge this project addresses.

We seek candidates to join the dAIEdge project – working towards the development of machine learning and AI methods for edge devices. This would be suitable for machine learning or machine learning systems researchers in computer science, engineering, or from other disciplines.  The successful candidate will have a strong machine learning portfolio, and a knowledge of computer systems. The researcher will engage in cutting edge research in the field, and develop strong networking across Europe in the AI Edge arena.

The University of Edinburgh component of the Horizon project dAIEdge is led by Amos Storkey (Informatics) and Elliot J. Crowley (Engineering) and involves many other academic institutions and key companies across Europe. The successful candidate will be based in the Informatics Forum, in central Edinburgh.

The School of Informatics is one of the largest research centres in Computer Science in Europe, and it has been ranked #1 in the UK in terms of research power by a large margin. Informatics, Edinburgh is world renowned in Machine Learning, publishing in all the top venues in these fields. We are offering an exciting opportunity to work in an interdisciplinary, collaborative, friendly, and supportive environment, integrating different sub-fields of within Artificial Intelligence. 

We welcome both local (UK-resident) and international applicants. This position will include funding for international travel – e.g., for attending conferences, visiting research collaborators, and disseminating research findings. Furthermore, the researcher will have access to the computing infrastructure and office spaces available within Informatics and the research groups.

We are strongly committed to offering everyone an inclusive and non-discriminating working environment. We warmly welcome qualified candidates from all backgrounds to apply and particularly encourage applications from under-represented groups in the field.

Your skills and attributes for success: 

Essential: 

• PhD (or near completion) or equivalent research experience in artificial intelligence, machine learning methods, machine learning systems or a very related discipline.
• Experience and evidence of effective independent research work within a research team, and contribution to the team effort. Evidence of ability to network and build collaborations.
• Demonstrated quality of research performance, as evidenced by high-quality publications in top-tier machine learning/computer vision venues (e.g., ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, AISTATS, UAI, AAAI, ACL, EMNLP, ICCV, ECCV, CVPR), and relevant journals (IEEE PAMI, JMLR among others).
• Strong programming skills; experience with Python and deep learning libraries (e.g., PyTorch or TensorFlow).
• Ability to communicate complex information clearly, orally and in writing, in English.

The following desirable criteria will be evaluated by the level of proficiency. Recruitment will aim at selecting those candidates with the best possible performance in these criteria.

Desirable knowledge, skills, and experience are:

• Substantial previous research component in systems, on-device development, machine learning hardware or edge devices.
• Broad knowledge of machine learning methods beyond modern deep learning methods. Knowledge of classical machine learning approaches and their foundations.
• Understanding of multi-agent systems and game theory.

Click to view a copy of the full job description. 

If you are interested in this post then it is recommended you make informal enquiries to Amos Storkey at amos+dAIEdge@inf.ed.ac.uk for any further information, alongside making the application.

Feedback is only provided to interviewed candidates.

As a valued member of our team you can expect: 

An exciting, positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work. We give you support, nurture your talent and reward success. You will benefit from a competitive reward package and a wide range of staff benefits, which includes a generous holiday entitlement, a defined benefits pension scheme, staff discounts, family friendly initiatives, flexible working and much more. Access our staff benefits page for further information and use our reward calculator to find out the total value of pay and benefits provided.

The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality. 

If invited for interview you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK.  Further information is available on our right to work webpages.

Unless stated otherwise the closing time for applications is 11:59 PM GMT. If you are applying outside the UK the closing time on our adverts automatically adjusts to your browsers local time zone. 

The University is able to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role. If successful, an international applicant requiring sponsorship to work in the UK will need to satisfy the UK Home Office’s English Language requirements and apply for and secure a Skilled Worker Visa. 

About Us

As a world-leading research-intensive University, we are here to address tomorrow’s greatest challenges. Between now and 2030 we will do that with a values-led approach to teaching, research and innovation, and through the strength of our relationships, both locally and globally.

About The Team

Informatics is the study of how natural and artificial systems store, process and communicate information. Research in Informatics promises to take information technology to a new level, and to place information at the heart of 21st century science, technology and society.  The School enjoys collaborations across many disciplines in the University, spanning all three College, and also participates as a strategic partner in the Alan Turing Institute and, with Heriot-Watt University, in the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics.

The School provides a fertile environment for a wide range of studies focused on understanding computation in both artificial and natural systems. It attracts students around the world to study in our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and currently has approximately 1000 undergraduate students, 320 MSc students and 350 PhD students. Informatics is one of seven schools in the College of Science and Engineering, at the University of Edinburgh. It is recognised for the employability of its graduates (demand exceeds supply), its contributions to entrepreneurship, and the excellence of its research. Since the first Research Assessment Exercise in 1986, Informatics at Edinburgh has consistently been assessed to have more internationally excellent and world-class research than any other submission in Computer Science and Informatics. The latest REF 2014 results have again confirmed that ours is the largest concentration of internationally excellent research in the UK. This contributes to our ranking in the top 15 CS departments world-wide according to the latest Times Higher Education ranking.

We aim to ensure that our culture and systems support flexible and family-friendly working and recognise and value diversity across all our staff and students. The School has an active programme offering support and professional development for all staff; providing mentoring, training, and networking opportunities.

Please click here to apply.