Research Associate

Job description

Dr Slovak's group is seeking a highly motivated post-doctoral researcher or research assistant with a strong background in Human-Computer Interaction or Computer Science, as part of the newly awarded £1.2 million UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (https://petrslovak.com/flf/ ).  The successful candidate will be mentored jointly by Dr Slovak, Prof Max Van Kleek (Oxford), and Prof Nic Marquardt (UCL).  

The project will envision, develop, and test new technologically-enabled interventions in the context of child mental health. Such innovative approaches are sorely needed: more than 1 in 10 children and young people (aged 5-16 years) in the UK have a clinically diagnosable mental health problem, yet only 30% have had appropriate intervention at a sufficiently early age, and less than half of those improve from the treatment.

The overarching goal of this project is to conceptualise, develop, and deploy a new class of mental health interventions that—in contrast to the current workshop and classroom based approaches—are fully embedded in the lives of children and their families through connected, embedded toys, sensors, and devices. As an example, PI's prior work led to an interactive socially-assistive robot (‘smart toy’), which has since been commercialised (purrble.com) by the largest social-emotional developer in the US (Committee for Children). This serves as an initial proof-of-concept showcasing the possibility of the envisioned intervention model, as well as the appeal and benefits of such new interventions.

Since the project started in January 2021, the team has secured a further round of funding (as part of a £4 million MRC programme grant) and has active collaborations with leading researchers across Oxford, Stanford, Michigan, UW, Nottingham, KCL, and other universities world-wide.

The postdoctoral researcher will take a lead on the technical design and development of innovative mental health interventions across two case study contexts—emotion regulation and parenting interventions—working directly with the PI and another HCI postdoctoral fellow as relevant. The successful candidate will help translate identified user needs into innovative technology infrastructures (relying on embedded/IoT systems); rapidly create hardware/software prototypes to test the intervention effects; and translate successful prototypes into production-worthy open source projects that can be taken up by the HCI and clinical psychology communities. Grade 6 (i.e., postdoctoral) candidates will be also expected to lead the preparation and dissemination of results at top venues in HCI. 

The researcher will have access to funds to hire additional software/hardware developers to support their work and scale up research efforts (after consultation with the PI),  with ~£80k budgeted for such RAs across the project duration. A substantial prototyping and user study budget is also available. The fellowship includes a generous training and travel budget directly allocated for the researcher (~ £10k for the 2.5 years). For Grade 6 researchers there will be an opportunity to co-supervise PhD students associated with the project, aiming to further help position the researcher as an academic leader and prepare them for the next step in their careers.

In addition, the research associate will be able to interact, collaborate, and learn from a network of world-leading professors associated with the project at KCL and across other top universities (Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, UCL, Michigan, Northwestern, UW, …) as well as leading non-profit developers of intervention programs (e.g., Committee for Children, whose program is in more than 30% of US schools; or Silvercloud, a leading UK Digital Health platform), thereby allowing for a range of opportunities and career choices.

The successful candidate will join the HCC group and will be able to contribute and get involved in various departmental hubs. 

This post will be offered on an a fixed-term contract for 30 months.

This is a full-time  post - 100% full time equivalent.

Key responsibilities

• Lead on the technical design and development of innovative mental health interventions to children and families for the home.
• Participating in a multidisciplinary design team to translate identified user needs into appropriate technology infrastructures.
• Rapidly create hardware/software prototypes suitable for field studies and real-world deployments that can be used to assess feasibility and effectiveness of psychological inventions (as supported by HCI/clinical researchers on the team).
• Translate prototypes to potential production-worthy open source projects including managing a development team as necessary
• Dissemination of the project results by leading publication efforts and supporting existing collaborations with leading groups world-wide (Oxford, Stanford, Nottingham, UW, Michigan and others).
• Developing their own associated research agenda including potential co-supervision of Ph.D. students.

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

Skills, knowledge, and experience

Essential criteria

Grade 5

Grade 6

Desirable criteria