Research Associate

Imperial College London



Job description
Job summary

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering are seeking a Research Associate to work on the Horizon Europe funded project “R3VOLUTION (A rEVOLUTIONary approach for maximising process water REuse and REsource REcovery through a smart, circular and integrated solution).” The project aims to revolutionize industrial water management in the EU, providing key innovations that can enable economically, environmentally and operationally water reclamation projects (by addressing solutes and energy recovery challenges), and generate significant impact for the EU in the next decade.

To pave the way towards sustainable and efficient water and resource consumption, R3VOLUTION takes on the challenge of developing and demonstrating a resource recovery solution that will enable water reuse across most intensive water industries, whilst recovering effluents solutes, reuse of waste heat and elimination of hazardous substances. The project will investigate, develop and demonstrate tailored membrane-based treatment trains, and a digital process assistant (DPA) to support the design phase, across a variety of industries with high water discharges.

This is a fixed term post for two years.

Duties and responsibilities

You will be responsible for the following tasks:

  • Digitalisation Process: Lead the integration of Data Management Plan (DMP) solutions at pilot sites. Coordinate the development and implementation of digital tools, ensuring they are aligned with other relevant tasks and WPs of the project. Connect and manage data from sensors to support the digital twin, providing actionable recommendations. Handle data retrieval, storage, processing, and the calibration of models in compliance with specifications.
  • Techno-Economic Assessment: Conduct a preliminary techno-economic assessment of the project’s technologies, focusing on technical and economic feasibility at an industrial scale. Develop high-level equipment lists, design specifications, and evaluate market potential and risks.
  • Environmental, Circularity, and Social Assessment: Evaluate the sustainability and circularity of project’s systems. Perform Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and social LCA (sLCA). Align with the Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) principle and contribute to the multi-objective optimization of systems.

Essential requirements

  • Proven experience in digitalisation, data analysis and data management, or a related field.
  • Knowledge of advanced computation techniques to support sustainability and circularity assessments, including sensitivity and uncertainty analysis
  • Practical experience in a broad range of assessments including LCA, carbon footprint analysis, and circularity analysis of biobased systems.
  • Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and project management skills.
  • Ability to work collaboratively in a multi-disciplinary team.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Further information

As Imperial College staff, in addition to a competitive salary and package of attractive terms and conditions of service, we offer many more benefits to enjoy. This includes career development tailored to your ambitions, an attractive pension scheme, and generous family leave packages. We have a flexible, supportive work environment and encourage you to achieve and maintain a healthy work-life balance!

For informal enquiries about the post please contact Professor Evina Katsou on  [email protected] .

For queries regarding the recruitment process please contact Briony Webb on [email protected]

Candidates who have not yet been officially awarded their PhD will be appointed as a Research Assistant within the salary range £40,694- £43,888 per annum.

We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from all backgrounds and disabilities. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable adjustments to participate in the interview process and to perform crucial job functions, as well as other support including staff networks. Please contact us to request accommodation.

The College is a proud signatory to the San-Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which means that in hiring and promotion decisions, we evaluate applicants on the quality of their work, not the journal impact factor where it is published. For more information, see https://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-evaluation/

The College believes that the use of animals in research is vital to improve human and animal health and welfare. Animals may only be used in research programmes where their use is shown to be necessary for developing new treatments and making medical advances. Imperial is committed to ensuring that, in cases where this research is deemed essential, all animals in the College’s care are treated with full respect, and that all staff involved with this work show due consideration at every level.

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-integrity/animal-research / 

We are committed to equality of opportunity, to eliminating discrimination and to creating an inclusive working environment for all. We therefore encourage candidates to apply irrespective of age, disability, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or parental status, race, religion and belief, gender identity, sex, or sexual orientation. We are an Athena SWAN Silver Award winner, a Disability Confident Leader and a Stonewall Diversity Champion.

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