KTP Associate for MoreLife Project

Durham University

Durham University is one of the world's top universities with strengths across the Arts and Humanities, Sciences and Social Sciences. We are home to some of the most talented scholars and researchers from around the world who are tackling global issues and making a difference to people's lives.

The University sits in a beautiful historic city where it shares ownership of a UNESCO World Heritage Site with Durham Cathedral, the greatest Romanesque building in Western Europe. A collegiate University, Durham recruits outstanding students from across the world and offers an unmatched wider student experience. Less than 3 hours north of London, and an hour and a half south of Edinburgh, County Durham is a region steeped in history and natural beauty. The Durham Dales, including the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, are home to breath-taking scenery and attractions. Durham offers an excellent choice of city, suburban and rural residential locations. The University provides a range of benefits including pension and childcare benefits and the University’s Relocation Manager can assist with potential schooling requirements.

Durham University seeks to promote and maintain an inclusive and supportive environment for work and study that assists all members of our university community to reach their full potential. Diversity brings strength and we welcome applications from across the international, national and regional communities that we work with and serve.

The KTP Project   

The KTP Associate will lead a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project that is a collaboration between Durham University and MoreLife UK Ltd. based in Leeds. The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) scheme helps businesses to innovate and grow through the aid of discipline specific academic expertise. It does this by linking them with an academic supervisory team and a researcher in a university to work on a specific project.

Working alongside CTO, project managers, digital programme lead, psychology lead and software development team, the KTP Associate will be involved in a project to design, develop and implement innovative methods for delivering real-time personalised weight management interventions, via an accessible digital platform.

Department of Computer Science

The successful candidate will be working with academics in the Department of Computer Science. The Department is a UK Top 10 Department according to the Complete University Guide 2023. We are committed to high quality research and are proud of the people who make it happen. Computer Science increased excellence in all areas of research since the last research assessment exercise, moving 6 places up the ranking to the 20th position for REF 2021. Our research strengths include AI, computer vision, theoretical computer science, high-performance computing, digital humanities and bioinformatics. We put high emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion for our staff and students. Since 2020, the department has moved into a new purpose-built building. Our strong alumni network contributes to the department in many ways - including our External Advisory Board, visiting speakers, student placements, and philanthropic support of scholarships. We have some highly influential alumni in the Tech Sector.

MoreLife

(more-life.co.uk/ ) is a health and well-being company providing services to NHS England and local authorities. The services include weight management, smoking cessation, and active well-being programmes, NHS health checks, consultancy and training. The staff include psychologists, nutritionist, dietician, sports/activity leaders. The staff and services are supported by a digital infrastructure comprising a staff-facing data management system and client-facing system. The company has a strong track record of multi-disciplinary research; the CEO Paul Gately is a Professor of Sports.

Specific responsibilities of the Associate:

• Identify internal stakeholders of MoreLife (UK) Ltd. Understand company business & capabilities. Problem statement and project scope formulation.

• Review of state-of-the-art in: data preparation and feature extraction; fairness in data; machine learning for feature extraction, sentiment and behaviour analysis. User needs analysis - Identify, invite, recruit target participants.

• Data collection from different knowledge sources (including: social media, company and NHS data records, focus groups, self-reporting).

• Dataset creation and data cleaning.

• Model learning: training, testing and evaluation of the algorithms on the collected dataset.

• Implementation and integration with MoreLife systems.

• Promotion of the project, final reporting, including progress reviews and updates to stakeholders.

• Journal/conference paper writing and publishing.

Responsible to:      

 Dr Sunčica Hadžidedić , Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Durham University.

Dr Dorothy Monekosso, Chief Technology Officer, MoreLife UK Ltd.

Location:                  

The KTP Associate will be employed by Durham University but will be based at MoreLife UK, Leeds, and will be expected to spend time in Durham University to undertake the partnership’s objectives.

Additional Information:

For an informal discussion about the post please contact:   

Dr Sunčica Hadžidedić, (e-mail: suncica.hadzidedic@durham.ac.uk )

Dr Dorothy Monekosso (e-mail: dorothy.monekosso@more-life.co.uk )  

Find more information about the company at: (Healthy Lifestyle Programmes | MoreLife UK (more-life.co.uk) )

Find out more about the University at: https://www.dur.ac.uk/

Find more information on the Innovate UK programme at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/knowledge-transfer-partnerships-what-they-are-and-how-to-apply

What to submit?

All applicants are asked to submit:

• A CV and cover letter which details your experience, strengths and potential in the requirements set out above;

• One own article (including a conference/journal paper, a manuscript in preparation or a PhD thesis chapter)

Next Steps

The assessment for the post will include several stages:

Stage 1. A review of the submitted applications by a panel of KTP team members.

Stage 2. Candidates selected for stage 2 will be invited for interview to present their own experience in the here specified post requirements and responsibilities and present a prior research project or study. The interviews are planned for February 2023.

Stage 3. Candidates selected for the final assessment stage will be tested on practical skills related to this job post. They will be given a data analysis task to attempt to complete in Python within 1 hour, being observed by the assessment committee members.

Person Specification

The Requirements

Essential:

Qualifications

Experience

Skills

Attributes

Desirable skills: