Research Associate

Location: South Kensington, London 

Job Summary 

Applicants are invited to apply for a post-doctoral Research Associate position as part of the project “System Services in 100% Renewable Grids.” The project is funded by the Leverhulme Professorship held by Professor Mark O’ Malley  and aims to investigate services needed in 100% renewable electricity grids. The efficacy of the services will be assessed across multiple objectives for the electric grid including but not limited to reliability, cost-effectiveness, affordability, and resiliency. As part of the project, emerging resources enabled by the digitalization and hybridization of energy systems will be modelled and their contribution to existing and proposed services will be studied to identify any potential revisions to resource participation models. Emerging resources range from Inverter Based Resources (e.g. Wind, Solar Photovoltaic and Batteries) to large scale seasonal demand management and storage.

The project team currently includes Professor Mark O'Malley (Leverhulme Professor), Professor Janusz Bialek (a part-time Principal Research Fellow), Dr Elina Spyrou (Leverhulme Lecturer), two post-doctoral Research Associates, four pre-doctoral Research Assistants, and one PhD student. The team is aligned to the Global Power System Transformation (G-PST) initiative and its Research Agenda and will expand substantially over the coming year as part of the recently announced Global Centres in Electric Power Innovation for a Carbon-free Society (EPICS) .

Duties and responsibilities 

The responsibilities include planning research, directing the work of small research teams, assisting in the supervision of undergraduate and postgraduate research students and Research Assistants, identifying and developing suitable techniques to address research questions, managing data, applying data quality procedures, writing reports for submission to research sponsors, presenting research findings to colleagues at conferences, publish in high-quality refereed journals and to participate in attracting additional research funding.

The successful postholder will conduct and plan their own scientific work with minimal supervision. They will be based at Imperial and will also collaborate closely with colleagues at Imperial and in the G-PST  consortium. The successful postholder will visit collaborators in the G-PST consortium, will attend relevant workshops and conferences, developing and pursuing collaborations within the College and with the wider community.

The successful postholder will maintain a highly organised and accurate record of experimental work and promote the reputation of the team, the Department and the College. 

Essential requirements 

Applicants should have a PhD degree in Engineering, Economics, Applied Mathematics or a closely related discipline. Preference will be given to applicants with expertise in control applied to distributed or inverter-based resources and experience in one or more of the following areas:

• Power System Operations and Planning
• Power System Economics
• Power Electronics
• Data Science for Power Systems

Applicants should have a publication record in their area of expertise. Experience of dealing with the energy industry and or policy makers and/or research sponsors in energy/environment or in a closely related area is desired but not necessary to apply for the position. Experience and knowledge in a subset of a broad range of techniques and methods including analysis of power systems, modelling of large-scale power systems, optimisation, digitalisation, statistics, and probability etc. will be necessary.

Applicants must hold — at the start date of the position — a doctoral degree.

Apply online via the above ‘Apply’ button.