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ASSISTANT PROFESSOR / ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR / PROFESSOR in COMPUTER SCIENCE HERIOT-WATT UNIVERSITY, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, UK SALARY (for ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR LEVEL): £59,135 -£41,526 per annum START DATE: FROM SEPTEMBER 2021 (NEGOTIABLE) CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: 11 April 2021

Heriot-Watt University has established a reputation for world-class teaching and leading-edge, relevant research, which has made it one of the top UK universities for innovation, business and industry. To celebrate our 2021 bicentenary of pioneering research, we have set ourselves the target of recruiting one hundred outstanding research academics between 2018 and 2021.

As part of this prestigious programme, the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences (MACS) welcomes applications for the posts of Assistant / Associate Professor / Professor in Computer Science. We particularly welcome applicants with expertise in either:

(i) Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (which includes pervasive and ubiquitous systems, planning, data science and semantic web, autonomous agents, human-robot interaction, human computer interaction and multimodal interaction);

(ii) Security and Verification (including verification of system safety and security, cybersecurity, automated reasoning, theorem proving, programming languages and semantics, foundations of computer science).

In addition, and as part of the School’s on-going plans to open new joint Mathematics-CS and Statistics-CS posts, we encourage applicants who have interdisciplinary training or experience linking one of the outlined CS priority areas and topics in Mathematics and Statistics (including, but not limited to, algebra and category theory, discrete mathematics and logic, financial risk, cyber risk, actuarial and statistical data science, statistical machine learning, Bayesian computational methods).

The School strongly encourages and supports the generation of industry impact from research, and we welcome candidates with experience of working in industry on AI, data science, robotics, autonomous systems, verification or security projects or a strong track record of collaborating with industrial partners.

Exceptional candidates possessing an extensive track record of internationally excellent research and leadership may be considered for appointment at Chair level; candidates interested in the position at Chair level should in the first instance contact the Head of School, Prof Beatrice Pelloni, b.pelloni(a)hw.ac.uk.

The School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences is committed to support family friendly work practices and part-time working options as part of our Athena Swan Bronze award (see https://www.hw.ac.uk/schools/mathematical-computer-sciences/about/athena-swa...).

We especially encourage women and members of underrepresented groups to apply for this position. We welcome and will consider flexible working patterns e.g. part-time working and job share options.

ABOUT OUR TEAM:

The Department of Computer Scienceis internationally renowned for its world-class research across a number of areas, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, data integration, knowledge representation, visualization and analytics, natural language processing, formal methods, logic, type theory, programming languages, parallel computation, human-computer and human-robot interaction, and cybersecurity.

Jointly with University of Edinburgh, we host the center for doctoral training “Edinburgh Centre for Robotics” and the UK’s first National Robotarium, that together form a £129M joint venture, a center of excellence for AI research on an international scale, and a research and innovation hub with >150 staff and PhD students. In RCUK’s recent Grand Challenges Scheme: Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS), our academics form core teams in 2 out of 7TAS nodes (each node is supported by a £3M research grant). The two nodes stand for“Trust” and “Governance” in Autonomous Systems. Our grant funding in this area has also grown through being awarded jointly with another school at HWU an EPSRC Industrial Strategy Challenge Strategy Fund for the Robotics Hub for Offshore Robotics for Certification of Assets (ORCA) worth £14.6M, which is one of the largest industrial strategy challenge funds awards in Scotland.

The department has strong collaboration with Industry. Since 2014, we have undertaken 107 projects with industrial partners, through our doctoral training centers (40 industrial partners), the ORCA hub (30 industrial partners), and the TAS nodes. Among our collaborators are Amazon Research, BP, Chevron, FiveAI, Horiba Mira, Imandra, Kawasaki, Kuka Robotics, Lloyds, Schlumberger, and many others.

For further information, please consult the university job portal (h ttps://www.hw.ac.uk/uk/about/work/job-opportunities.htm https://www.hw.ac.uk/uk/about/work/job-opportunities.htm). For informal discussions about the position or the department of Computer Science please contact Prof. Ekaterina Komendantskaya (Head of Computer Science) at ek19(a)hw.ac.uk Alternatively, you may like to approach one of the members of the recruitment committee:

James McKinna (Logic, Semantics of Programming languages, Verification), Ron Petrick (AI planning, Symbolic AI), Sasa Radomirovic (Security)