Date Posted: 05/09/2025
Req ID: 42825
Faculty/Division: Faculty of Arts & Science
Department: Acceleration Consortium
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00057765

ABOUT US:

The Faculty of Arts & Science is the heart of Canada’s leading university and one of the most comprehensive and diverse academic divisions in the world. The strength of Arts & Science derives from our combined teaching and research excellence in the humanities, sciences and social sciences across 29 departments, seven colleges and 46 interdisciplinary centres, institutes and programs.
The Acceleration Consortium (AC) at the University of Toronto (U of T) is leading a transformative shift in scientific discovery that will accelerate technology development and commercialization. The AC is a global community of academia, industry, and government that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, materials sciences, and high-throughput chemistry to create self-driving laboratories (SDLs), also called materials acceleration platforms (MAPs). These autonomous labs rapidly design materials and molecules needed for a sustainable, healthy, and resilient future, with applications ranging from renewable energy and consumer electronics to drugs. AC Staff Scientists will advance the infield of AI-driven autonomous discovery and develop the materials and molecules required to address society’s largest challenges, such as climate change, water pollution, and future pandemics.
The Acceleration Consortium received a $200M Canadian First Research Excellence Grant for seven years to develop self-driving labs for chemistry and materials, the largest ever grant to a Canadian University.
We can only realize our mission with the dedication and excellence of engaged staff and faculty. The diversity of opportunities and perspectives within the Faculty reflect the local and global landscape and the need for curiosity, innovative thinking and collaboration. At Arts & Science, we take pride in our legacy of innovation and discovery that has changed the way we think about the world.

ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s Degree in engineering or computer science, or acceptable combination of equivalent experience and education
• Minimum three years of recent and relevant experience in supporting research projects focused on diverse formulation, including experimental design and execution, prototype development, data analysis, data reporting, and lab maintenance.
• Experience with device communication protocols (e.g. RS232) and IOT communication protocols (e.g. MQTT)
• Strong abilities in Python and object-oriented programming, ideally also including experience with C, C++, C#, and SQL.
• Experience with interfacing with APIs to develop custom wrappers for tasks including monitoring device status, sending/receiving commands, downloading data, uploading config files, etc.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to effectively collaborate with interdisciplinary teams and present technical information to diverse audiences.
• Willingness to learn new skills and tackle complex open-ended problems

LIVED EXPERIENCE STATEMENT

Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES WILL INCLUDE:

• Coordinate robotic platforms and equipment with open-source APIs to centralize control of experimental workflows
• Preparing draft statistical reports and summaries from data collected
• Creating and editing a standard operating procedures manual
• Analyzing and recommending options for project design
• Work closely with multidisciplinary engineering and science teams to design and implement customized automation tools for research in self-driving labs.
• Develop, program, and document software tools to enable device operation (e.g. drivers or API-wrappers), device intercommunication via local network, USB connection, RS232 comm, etc., and simple data monitoring and transfer; Develope code for user-interfacing web or stand-alone applications
• Design and execute testing and benchmarking tasks to assess the performance of newly developed automation solutions
• Serving as a technical resource to internal team members and external stakeholders

TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN THIS ROLE YOU WILL BE:

• Communicator
• Efficient
• Insightful
• Meticulous
• Organized
• Team player
  Closing Date: 05/23/2025, 11:59PM ET
  Employee Group: USW
  Appointment Type: Grant - Term
  Schedule: Full-Time