[alife] Senior Lecturer / Professor in Computer Science and Informatics - Keele University

[Alastair Channon]

Dear ALife Community,

Keele University is seeking to appoint a senior lecturer or professor in 
Computer Science and Informatics (see advert text below).  We would very 
much welcome applications from individuals who are research active 
within artificial life, computational intelligence, evolutionary and 
adaptive systems, natural computation or a related field.  See below for 
examples of recent and ongoing research at Keele in these areas.

Following growth in our Project Management MSc programme, candidates 
also able to contribute to teaching in software engineering and project 
management are particularly encouraged to apply.

For those unfamiliar with the British system, a senior lecturer is 
approximately equivalent to an associate professor (without tenure 
review) and the title professor is reserved for full professors: this is 
a permanent faculty position for a research active individual.  Keele 
University was founded in 1949 and is situated in a very beautiful and 
spacious campus in the middle of England, in the county of 
Staffordshire.  Keele places a high value on excellent research and we 
support nationally and internationally competitive expertise throughout 
the Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Health and Humanities.

Best wishes,
Alastair

PS: Candidates from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and 
Switzerland may like to know that the UK has recently enhanced its 'tier 
1 (exceptional talent)' route for those who are internationally 
recognised as world leaders or potential world-leading talent in the 
fields of science and the arts, to encourage you to come to the UK.

-- 

Dr Alastair Channon
Computational Intelligence and Cognitive Science Research Group
Programme Director: Computer Science (Single and Dual Honours),
Information Systems, Creative Computing and Smart Systems.
School of Computing and Mathematics, Keele University
Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, UK. www.scm.keele.ac.uk/staff/a_channon

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Senior Lecturer / Professor in Computer Science and Informatics
School of Computing and Mathematics
Faculty of Natural Sciences
Keele University

Starting salary (depending on qualifications and experience):
Senior Lecturer (Grade 9): £47,314 - £53,233
Professor (Grade 10): Professorial scale

We wish to appoint a full-time Senior Lecturer or Professor in Computer 
Science and Informatics. Applications are welcomed from individuals who 
can carry out high quality research as well as being enthusiastic 
teachers in Computing. No field of the subject will be excluded, but 
candidates with interests including software engineering and project 
management are particularly encouraged to apply.

The successful candidate will have a PhD in Computer Science, 
Informatics or a related discipline and will have experience of teaching 
in higher education. You will be able to demonstrate an ability to 
develop, support and deliver high quality undergraduate and postgraduate 
teaching and associated assessment. The position will also involve 
contributing to managerial and administrative duties within the School, 
depending on experience.

The post-holder will be expected to have shown significant achievement 
in research and will have the potential to develop and/or enhance 
internationally competitive research that complements our existing 
research strengths and teaching in software engineering and project 
management. The post-holder will be able to demonstrate a proven track 
record in leading and managing successful research programmes.

For informal enquiries please contact Professor Graham Rogerson, Head of 
School by email (g.a.rogerson at keele.ac.uk) or through the School Office 
on 01782 733075.

For full post details and to apply, please visit:
http://tinyurl.com/n45rfmx

Closing date for applications: 4 July 2013

Interviews will be held on: 16 September 2013

Post reference: AC13/27

Further Particulars:
http://www.keele.ac.uk/vacancies/academicposts/AC13-27FP.doc
(Opens fine in LibreOffice 4.0 but not 3.6)

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Computational Intelligence and Cognitive Science

Keele's Computational Intelligence and Cognitive Science (CICS) group 
uses computational models and simulation to advance our understanding of 
how evolution, learning and other adaptive processes can be harnessed in 
the development of intelligent systems.  It addresses fundamental issues 
surrounding machine intelligence, robotics and the emergence of 
complexity, as well as helping to solve real-world problems.  Examples 
of recent and ongoing research at Keele include:

+ Developing models of evolutionary dynamics and genetic algorithms that 
exhibit open-ended evolution.  These advance our abilities both to 
evolve complex emergent processes and structures, including neurally 
controlled agents, and to study natural selection's contribution to the 
origins and maintenance of organismal complexity;

+ EPSRC funded work on the relationship between population size and the 
mutation rate above which alleles with the highest fitnesses are lost 
from simple evolving populations, and the implications this has for 
species under threat of extinction;

+ EPSRC funded work on the evolution of DNA sequences and their bindings 
to transcription factors and other proteins, with experiments run on the 
University’s CUDA GPGPU high performance computing cluster;

+ Capturing some of the expertise of expert astronomers into neural 
networks for the automated interrogation of very large astrophysical 
datasets;

+ Helping the decision making of NHS clinicians through the development 
of neural networks and other models that improve the diagnosis and 
prognosis respectively of colo-rectal cancer and of upper-limb 
impairments resulting from stroke;

+ EPSRC funded work with colleagues from Physics for the automated 
element-specific detection by neural networks of sensitive substances 
illuminated by some of the latest X-ray scanning equipment;

+ Industry funded work on non-linear time-series data analysis using 
reservoir computing and extreme learning machines, with applications to 
defect detection in reinforced concrete and hydrocarbon profiles for the 
ageing of Lucilia Sericata for post-mortem interval estimation;

+ Developing a numerical method for estimating the position of a moving 
robot using the intensity of the seismic waves that it causes on the 
arena upon which it moves;

+ Using an evolutionary algorithm to determine the parameters of a 
biologically inspired model of head direction cells;

+ BBSRC funded work on automated object recognition and focussing for 
medical applications, including: the automated identification of tissue 
boundaries in computer tomographic (CT) scans, enabling the next 
generation of radiotherapy linear accelerators to target diseased 
tissues (with their multiple highly focussed low-power beams) rather 
than neighbouring healthy organs: essential for the roll-out of this 
life-saving equipment for the treatment of cancer; new fractal 
algorithms to characterise the quality of transplanted cell growth from 
post-operative biopsies, essential for the development of a medical 
capability for large-scale patient-specific generation of cartilage 
growth for the treatment of arthritis; and algorithms to improve not 
just the tracking of cells but also the auto-focus method used in high 
throughput phase contrast microscopy;

+ EPSRC, AWM, DTI, EU and industry funded work on classification within 
forensic datasets, with applications in image source identification and 
unobtrusive but highly secure authentication methods.

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