Research Assistant in Embedded AI

School/Department: School of Aerospace, Transport and Manufacturing
Based at: Cranfield Campus, Cranfield, Bedfordshire
Hours of work: 37 hours per week, normally worked Monday to Friday. Flexible working will be considered.
Contract type: Fixed term contract
Fixed Term Period: 2 years
Salary: Full time starting salary is normally in the range of £26,860 per annum to £30,513 per annum, with potential progression up to £37,701 per annum
Apply by: 23/05/2023

Role Description

We welcome applications from prospective Research Assistants in Embedded AI with relevant knowledge and experience, to work on various industrial and research agency funded projects.

About the Role

Cranfield University has been awarded several prestigious research grants on Embedded AI for Control of Aerospace Subsystems including braking control of future landing gear designs. For example, the current Braking Control Reconfiguration is based on Rule based logic which is at its limits due to increased complexity of Aircraft Systems in the last two decades. Moreover, due to the increased complexity of the Next Generation Aircraft, it will not be feasible to follow the same route of Rule Based Logic to perform such a Critical Function for the Aircraft. Hence, the need to embed an Artificial Intelligence Neural Network in the aircraft to perform the function and which could be trained off-board in a safe manner. We are recruiting a Research Assistant to work under the umbrella of our general research vector in autonomy and AI focusing on embedded AI design, data analytic modelling of aerospace subsystems and simulation with a specific focus on the landing braking control reconfiguration.

As a Research Assistant you will contribute to the research activities of the Centre for Autonomous and Cyber-physical Systems, especially concerning the specific projects described above. You will be expected to collaborate with the existing staff working in the area and have communications and meetings with our collaborators within the university or in other international universities.

About You

You will be educated to B.Sc. level and have experience in AI driven software design, modeling and data analytics. You are expected to have excellent communication skills. You are expected to have excellent skills covering a wide range of software tools in design and development of AI algorithms and actual implementations including SIL and HIL testing. As a part of your work, you are expected to design data-driven and physics-informed surrogate model for Landing Gears, design reinforcement learning of real-time braking control adaptation and reconfiguration strategy across a range of operating conditions and faults, develop methods that provide assessment of safety and vulnerability of AI-driven designs towards sensing and PHM errors and adversarial attacks, develop methods that provide time-horizon based certificates of feasibility, performance and safety, and design integration of verification, validation and qualification toolsets towards certification use cases and steps.

Previous demonstrated experience and expertise, including AI design for aerospace systems, data analytics, and design, developing, and coding of AI driven implementations for control, estimation and modeling of aerospace systems is a must.

About Us

As a specialist postgraduate university, Cranfield’s world-class expertise, large-scale facilities and unrivalled industry partnerships are creating leaders in technology and management globally. Learn more about Cranfield and our unique impact here .

Aerospace is at the heart of Cranfield’s global research airport and is renowned throughout the world for its teaching and research in the fields of aviation and aerospace.  Cranfield Aerospace’s six centres are the powerhouses of our world class research, driving technological and conceptual advances in aeronautics, propulsion engineering, cyber-physical systems and intelligent automation. Through the strong links with industry built over the past 70 years, we focus on defining and delivering the aircraft, airport and airspace management of the future and are the only university in Europe with our own airport and runway.  Find out more about our work here About Aerospace .

We are recipients of several prestigious grants from industry and research agencies including EPSRC, Horizon Europe, Innovate UK and more. As a part of these grants, we are utilizing autonomous systems including air vehicles to demonstrate real-time autonomy including controls, guidance, navigation and higher level mission planning. As such, these systems can also be integrated to synthetic environments to be further utilized for co-simulation and co-testing with some elements being virtual and with some elements being real.

Our Values and Commitments

Our shared, stated values help to define who we are and underpin everything we do: Ambition; Impact; Respect; and Community. Find out more here .

We aim to create and maintain a culture in which everyone can work and study together and realise their full potential. We are a Disability Confident Employer and proud members of the Stonewall Diversity Champions Programme. We are committed to actively exploring flexible working options for each role and have been ranked in the Top 30 family friendly employers in the UK by the charity Working Families . Our equal opportunities and diversity monitoring has shown that women are currently underrepresented within the university and so we actively encourage applications from eligible female candidates.  Find out more about our key commitments to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Flexible Working here .

Working Arrangements

Collaborating and connecting are integral to so much of what we do. Our Working Arrangements Framework provides many staff with the opportunity to flexibly combine on-site and remote working, where job roles allow, balancing the needs of our community of staff, students, clients and partners.

For an informal discussion, please contact Professor Gokhan Inalhan on [email protected]

Contact us for further details on E: [email protected]  please quote reference number 4513. 

Closing date for receipt of applications: 23 May 2023