Research Fellow in Climate Innovation

South Kensington Campus - Hybrid

The Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, with the support of Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF) is looking for a researcher to work for us for two-years to set a firm scientific basis for climate change innovation and climate change philanthropy. 

The staff at the Grantham Institute is a mix of professional staff, with specialisms in innovation, research translation, communication and impact, and lecturers and research specialists jointly appointed with departments of the university, to ensure a strong cross-university integration. The institute is an excellent home for some postdocs and PhD students who carry out interdisciplinary research that doesn’t naturally fit into any of the departments of the university, but have strong connections across several, and excellent potential for impact. 

In parallel, QCF has built science into the heart of its strategy, which is reflected by its values: “Dispassionate: decisions follow the science” and “Humble: intellectually curious”.

We are looking for the second of two Research Fellows to help deliver the scientific base for QCF’s work, whilst working firmly within the research groups at the Grantham Institute and Imperial. You will work closely with both Alyssa Gilbert (Director of Innovation) and Joeri Rogelj (Director of Research) to ensure a combination of excellent academic-standard research with real-world applicability, including in the innovation sphere. 

Duties and responsibilities

You will have the opportunity to deliver your own deep and state-of-the art research whilst also producing outputs in a way that can help guide and shape significant philanthropic investments. These jobs offer the opportunity to amplify impact with your research. 

Working closely together with our Directors of Innovation and Research, as well as the funders, you will develop and deliver a programme of research in a specialist area of climate-related topics and manage and deliver high quality research over the two-year period. 

This fellowship is unconventional and some non-academic outputs will be expected at shorter-term intervals than conventional papers in parallel to your overall programme of research.

To be applicable in the philanthropic context, your may be asked to carry out some of these activities:

• Stress-testing programmes against scientific evidence
• Identifying explicitly where science is uncertain, which can feed into the development of experimental programmes
• Scoping specific scientific areas to highlight where there is the potential for innovation or other activities to fill gaps in the deployment of climate solutions
• Upskilling non-scientists about your area of research

Essential requirements 

We are looking for applicants with the ability to think strategically about a range of different topic areas, and their applicability to climate change innovation and action. These skills should be coupled with an ability to guide and conduct high-quality research and critical analysis across. We are open to receiving applications from a range of disciplines, however, we have significant interest in expertise covering the following areas:

• Energy systems and resilience
• City and building design, optimisation and decarbonisation
• Synthetic fuels 

Further Information

Please note you are required to submit a one-page Research Topic Summary which covers the research you would like to pursue as part of the fellowship. This should be uploaded as part of the additional material.

For informal queries please contact Dora Vrkic, [email protected]

Closes: 5 June 2024