Research Fellow - Clean Cold Chain - 2 Posts Available

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £31,406 to £40,927 with potential progression once in post to £43,434

Grade 7

Fixed-term for up to 36 months

Closing Date: 11 November 2021

Pathways to net-zero cold-chain - Opportunity to join major new global research team at Centre for Sustainable Cooling.

Temperature controlled supply chains are central to many aspects of a modern society and underpin socio-economic well-being as well as a population’s health – access to pharma and vaccines; access to nutritional food and prevention of food loss within the supply chains; protection and increase of farmer/rural incomes. Cold-chains are though energy intensive and currently reliant on both diesel, for example in a wide range of transport, weak grid and off-grid applications, and in many cases coal and/or natural gas based power grids.

Led by University of Birmingham, a collaboration of UK Universities with world-class expertise in clean cooling and cold-chain have secured £multi-million funding to work across a series of significant UK, European and international research projects to transform the cold-chain sector in developing and developed markets into a more efficient and sustainable system from ‘manufacturer to arm’ and ‘farm to fork’.

This includes the design and establishment of the new African Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain in Rwanda with the Governments of Rwanda and the United Kingdom (UK), the United Nations Environment Programme’s United for Efficiency initiative. Further Centres are to be announced shortly.

We are looking to recruit further Research Fellow(s) to work in the global Centre for Sustainable Cooling at University of Birmingham, contributing to work packages of the African Centre for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain (ACES) and UK and European Sustainable Food Cold-chain research programmes.

Main Duties include:

• Collect research data, both quantitative and qualitative data; this may be through a variety of research methods, such as literature reviews, research interviews and workshops
• Robust analysis of data, following ethical guidelines for data collection and analysis
• Contribute to technology selection based on, inter alia energy resources, social and economic criteria
• Contribute to developing new models, techniques and methods
• Write up research output into high quality reports and academic papers for publication
• Present findings in high quality conferences, workshops and meetings both in the UK and overseas

Person Specification

• Academic qualifications at the doctoral level in a relevant academic discipline and deep understanding of sustainable cooling and cold-chains and technologies, or equivalent qualifications/experience
• Interdisciplinary research experience linked to understanding complex social, economic and technical challenges
• An understanding of a range of influences from business drivers to cultural context and appreciation of whole systems models, techniques or methods.

Informal enquiries can be made to Toby Peters; t.peters@bham.ac.uk 

To download the full job description and details of this position and submit an electronic application online please click on the Apply Online button below or visit our careers website; https://bham.taleo.net/careersection/external/jobsearch.ftl?lang=en&portal=101430233, please quote Job Ref 98376  in all enquiries. 

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We value diversity and inclusion at the University of Birmingham and welcome applications from all sections of the community and are open to discussions around all forms of flexible working.

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