Research Fellow

at  Lancaster University

The Department of Psychology at Lancaster University is seeking to appoint a full time Research Fellow, to work on the Protecting Ordinary People from Deepfakes Project. We are looking to appoint a software/machine learning engineer (or similar) to work in an interdisciplinary team reporting to Dr Sophie Nightingale (Principal Investigator).
The Project is funded by the UKRI ESRC as part of Dr Nightingale’s Future Leaders Fellowship for which we are hiring a research team to work on mapping and mitigating the threats to ordinary people from deepfake technology. As part of this research team, we are seeking a Research Fellow to lead the development of a forensically assured verification system to detect non-consensual intimate imagery. You will be responsible for the development and day-to-day management of the system which will be built using face recognition technology. As such, you will be expected to have excellent software engineering/computational skills as well as competence in handling sensitive and confidential data. Within the project, you will be expected to work closely with the Principal Investigator and other team members to integrate experimental findings and theory to develop new tools and techniques, and/or to evolve the development of the system. We will also engage in codesign with project partners, including the police, the public, and charities to ensure that the system is useful, usable, trusted, and sustainable.
We are looking for someone with experience in software/machine learning engineering, automated data collection (crawling, scraping, parsing), and data management. You will work within a research team where their primary responsibilities are to design and develop a forensically assured face detection system that can be applied to detecting instances of non-consensual intimate imagery abuse; test accuracy and bias within the system; integrate novel research findings from the wider research team (and beyond) to improve system capability. Given the speed of technical innovation, you must be able to take an evaluative, critical, and dynamic approach and evolve according to new and emerging trends.
Working closely with the Principal Investigator, you will lead and mentor the research team on a day-to-day basis to ensure delivery of the Project objectives and research priorities across a large collaborative project. You will be expected to engage with external project partners and stakeholders (including the media and general public), to lead Project dissemination events, and to represent the Project at national and international conferences.

• Generous holiday leave - 25 days (pro-rata) annual leave plus University closure days and bank holidays.
• Access to employee pension scheme, and annual flexible benefits scheme.
• We are committed to promoting Equality, Diversity and Inclusion across the Faculty, and supporting family-friendly and flexible working policies on an individual basis. The Department holds an Athena Swan Silver Award, which recognises and celebrates good employment practice undertaken to address gender equality in Higher Education and research.
• For more information about the benefits of working at Lancaster University, including support for relocation from overseas, see Jobs - Lancaster University
  The Psychology Department is a busy teaching and research active Department. It is home to a friendly group of around 40 Academic staff, with teams of Research and Professional Services and Technical staff. The Department supports a large cohort of Undergraduate students; a thriving group of Masters and Postgraduate research students; and a wide range of research projects including several cross-institution grants.
  Further information about the Department is available at: http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk