Research Fellow

at  University College London

ABOUT US

NESTLER is a joint project between the EU and African member states designed to promote One-Health sustainable partnership. The project aims to bring together interdisciplinary technological advances to monitor effectively the well-being of animals, plants, and humans in a holistic approach.
We are offering a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position within the NESTLER project, to work within an exciting multidisciplinary team working on crop monitoring, characterisation and yield modelling and optimisation.

APPLICATION DETAILS:

• To apply for the role, click the ‘Apply Now’ button at the bottom or top of the page
• Applications close on 12th July 2024 at 23:59
• A job description and person specification can be accessed at the bottom of this page
• Informal enquiries regarding this post can be addressed to Prof Izzat Darwazeh i.darwazeh@ucl.ac.uk. For questions regarding the application process please contact Rebecca Thomas at becca.thomas@ucl.ac.uk.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The main duties and responsibilities will be:

• Investigate and design state-of-the-art environmental sensors for both soil and atmospheric conditions, with the aim to improve current sensor technologies, focusing on enhancing their accuracy, durability, and/or cost-effectiveness.
• Develop an optimised IoT sensing network to capture environmental data that are critical to crop production (the target crop for this project is cassava).
• Develop a crop growth and yield simulation model and calibrate it using the newly acquired data.
• Lead the application of machine learning approaches to identify patterns in cassava yield from farm-level data, data captured from field sensors as well as remote sensing data.
• Identification of the largest uncertainty factors in the yield model and improvement of model performance using artificial intelligence methods
• Support the development of climate change impact scenarios for cassava yield using the model.
• Contribute to the overarching goals of the research project team, by participating in meetings, contributing to research publications, and presenting your work at conferences.

The post is available until 30th August 2025 in the first instance. Further funding to support the post may be available.

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

• 41 Days holiday (27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
• Additional 5 days’ annual leave purchase scheme
• Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
• Immigration loan
• Relocation scheme for certain posts
• On-Site nursery
• On-site gym
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
• Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
• Discounted medical insuranc