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Apply by 4th October to become an ARC Academic Fellow
Become an ARC Academic Fellow to work together to further Digital Research across UCL
Are you interested in helping UCL develop the tools, practices and systems that enable computational science and digital scholarship for your discipline and others?
Are you interested in collaborating on research relating to software engineering, data science, data stewardship research infrastructure? Would you like to develop and foster skills that can benefit your discipline and other researchers across UCL?
Are you a senior member of UCL staff (Lecturer or above)?
If so, why not apply for a 20% - 40% FTE 2-year ARC Academic Fellowship
In ARC we collaborate with staff and students across UCL to produce world-leading digital research. We’re experts in: professional research software development; high performance computing; research data management; data science; research infrastructure including ML-ops, handling sensitive data and more. We’re helping to put UCL at the forefront of open science, establishing new professions such as research data stewards and research software developers. We also provide infrastructure and novel frameworks for high performance computing and educate colleagues and students across campus in all things related to digitally enabled research and scholarship.
What We're Looking For
You'll be involved in opening new lines of research and co-creating infrastructure, tools education and academic impact in scientific computing and digital scholarship. A particular focus is on the tools and systems that enable your research – i.e. where improving UCL’s provision and support for Digital Research and Scholarship in your domain will help us maintain our position as world leaders.
This is likely to be achieved by developing cross-disciplinary research (e.g. via grant funding, collaborative research projects, journal articles) that synergises your domain expertise with ARC’s in-depth understanding of Digital Research and Scholarship.
As part of this, we’d like you to help ARC develop an evidence base for future Digital Scholarship needs and to help us form UCL-wide communities of expertise and practice around how Digital Research is being utilised and can benefit in your discipline/domain of expertise now and in future.
There will also be opportunities to:
Co-supervise PhD students
Mentor ARC colleagues to further develop their academic careers – e.g. supervision, building a track record, publication, funding
We particularly welcome applications from Departments that do not currently have strong links with ARC, and from groups that are currently under-represented in Digital Research and Scholarship.
Why Apply?
ARC is at the centre of UCL’s Digital Research future, and is directly involved in setting national and international expectations for Digital Research, standards and career longevity that will underpin future Open Research. Benefits of working with us include:
Collaborative research, and cross-disciplinary working - working with the professionals and researchers who are establishing stronger foundations for digital scholarship all across UCL
Take your own research in new directions, focusing on tools and underpinning systems in ways that might not be compatible with traditional settings.
Work with cutting edge technologies
Be involved in the evolution of research - helping to establish research software engineer, research data engineer, research infrastructure and related professions
Collaborate closely with our EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training to do research and train PhD students at the forefront of research software engineering.
Direct access to world leading experts and specialists
ARC has recently been awarded an EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Collaborative Computational Modelling at the Interface, which jointly with Imperial College aims to train PhD students on the interface of research software engineering, computational sciences, and AI. As ARC Fellow you will be able to closely engage with this significant strategic investment.
Additionally, working with ARC Broaden your understanding of UCL and UCL's research culture, and provide opportunities for networking and collaboration with researchers from other departments in UCL, across the UK and internationally.
Through your Fellowship, your department will benefit from:
A better understanding of the way that ARC works, and more awareness of the support and services that are available, should mean that people are able to make better use of our services.
Easier close collaboration with ARC staff.
Ability to make sure that your department's and disciplines' views are heard when decisions are being made about Digital Research across UCL.
Strengthening grant and REF applications - ARC directly enables long term sustainability of software and data, provides career longevity for UCL staff in these roles and ensures that researchers are able to access AI, data science and HPC expertise in particular where these skills are not core within their home discipline.
How to Apply
You should apply by e-mail to arc.proposals@ucl.ac.uk, deadline of Friday 4th October 2024. Please submit the following with your application:
1. A CV
A 2-page CV summarising your career with the following headings:
Summary of your current research, for a non-expert audience
Research/grant funding track record
Academic supervision track record
Experience with mentoring and interdisciplinary collaboration
Link to a list of publications
2. A Proposal
Developing a strong cross-disciplinary collaboration with ARC is fundamental to this role. Fellows should be motivated/engaged to think for themselves as to how to develop the fellowship, in dialog with ARC staff. You are strongly encouraged to contact ARC staff when developing your proposal (see below).
Your 2-page proposal should outline:
The digital research/scholarship idea that you propose to develop, which may include
How this idea will benefit your research/discipline
How this idea will benefit your department
How this idea will benefit other disciplines across UCL
How your concept will specifically benefit from being co-developed in collaboration with ARC. This might include:
Benefits from interdisciplinary collaboration with and access to specific skills or knowledge in: software engineering, research infrastructure, data stewardship, education
The opportunity to develop an evidence-base for your work via access to a wide digital research user-base across UCL and /or to a unique ARC team that combines professional services and research
Community development activities that ARC is undertaking to develop digital research communities across UCL
A summary timeline for the research, including expected outputs/outcomes
3. Head of Department Approval
If you are appointed, you will need to have written agreement from your Head of Department that your time/commitments can be released for the duration of the Fellowship. Additionally, for research proposals relating to furthering Digital Research and Scholarship, you’ll be treated as a member of ARC staff.
The Fellowship will last for two years in the first instance (with an initial review at the six-month point). It may be extended further by mutual agreement.
Please obtain this agreement in advance and include this as part of your application (an e-mail is sufficient).
Making Contact with ARC Staff
You are strongly encouraged to contact ARC staff while developing your proposal. Once appointed, we will expect you to grow your network across all of ARC.
A list of staff can be found here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/advanced-research-computing/our-people-0.
We will be happy to facilitate introductions so if you’d like to contact someone with specific expertise (or would like help finding someone), do drop us an e-mail to arc.proposals@ucl.ac.uk with a paragraph outlining your proposal idea and the person / expertise you think might help.