Research Associate in Glaciology

Are you a glaciologist with an interest in technology? Would you like to work on an exciting project to study glacier hydrology and dynamics using new wireless instrumentation that can bring results from the field all year round? Come and join our growing research group of friendly people who study the cold regions of the world!

We’re looking for a glaciologist (with a PhD or equivalent research experience) to work on our new technology-led programme for studying glacier hydrology and dynamics. You will study the connections across supraglacial, englacial and subglacial hydrology and their links to ice dynamics. You’ll be part of an interdisciplinary team and work with engineers who will be developing new instruments. These instruments will measure conditions on the glacier surface, and also within and below it, and will report wirelessly in real time, with data being relayed back to Cardiff by satellite using internet-of-things (IoT) technologies. You will have the opportunity to learn some engineering skills and you will also develop software to process the data from the instruments and link it to other data sources such as from remote sensing.

This project is funded from a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship awarded to project lead Mike Prior-Jones. For more information, please watch the video on his profile page here: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/1439317-prior-jones-michael

Our research programme aims to identify how supraglacial hydrology couples with subglacial hydrology and affects ice dynamics. We will approach this through developing and deploying new instruments for use in snow, supraglacial streams, boreholes and subglacial channels. There is scope to shape the role to align with your interests, as the observational work also could be coupled with remote sensing and glacial modelling. Ideally you will have prior experience of studying glacial hydrology and ice dynamics through field observations.

Open science is very important to us, and we will be making the instruments and software open source and releasing the data on open platforms. You will develop software to share the data from the field in open geospatial formats (such as SensorML, SensorThings or netCDF), so prior experience of software development (coding) is essential. As a minimum, you should be capable of writing a program (in a language of your choice) to carry out a sequence of tasks and calculations, although ideally we would like you to be familiar with good practice in software development, use of libraries, APIs, source control (e.g. Git) and to be comfortable working in more than one programming language.

You should be committed to a positive and supportive team environment, capable of organising your own work, and co-ordinating with others over shared work and resources. You’ll be part of the Cryospheric & Hydrological Instrumentation Lab (CHIL) along with Mike Prior-Jones, one other Research Associate and one PhD student. You’ll also be part of the wider Cold Climate group, which includes four members of faculty, one more Research Associate and two further PhD students, providing many colleagues’ experience to draw on. The group is a part of the School of Earth and Environment Sciences, and we also have close connections and collaborations with the School of Engineering.

Much of our work is in collaboration with international partners, so please indicate in your application if you have previous experience of similar collaborations.. There are opportunities to travel for meetings, conferences, and fieldwork and those who have particular needs around travel and fieldwork (such as adjustments for disabilities or family commitments) will be accommodated: we will work with you to ensure that your travel and fieldwork meets your needs and that you find it enjoyable and fulfilling. Fieldwork locations potentially include the Swiss Alps, Canadian Rockies and Yukon, and Greenland.

Team development is very important to us, and it is important that you enjoy learning new skills and techniques, both from your colleagues and through formal training. To help you further your own research career, the role comes with a £5,000 personal development budget that you can use to pay for training, conferences and research activities that are not part of the core project.

There will be a pre-application webinar on Wednesday 22nd February 2023 at 1330 UTC to help answer any questions that you may have, and this will be recorded and made available afterwards for those unable to attend. To attend the webinar please register using this link. For further informal queries please contact either Mike Prior-Jones (Prior-JonesM@cardiff.ac.uk) or Liz Bagshaw (BagshawE@cardiff.ac.uk).

The role starts as soon as possible and is funded for three years. We can discuss delaying the start date for up to a few months if necessary.

This post is full-time (35 hours per week) and fixed term for 3 years.

The appointment will be made, dependent on relevant qualification and experience, within the following grade:

Salary: £35,333 - £42,155 per annum (Grade 6)

Closing date: Wednesday, 22 March 2023

Cardiff University is committed to supporting and promoting equality and diversity and to creating an inclusive working environment. We believe this can be achieved through attracting, developing, and retaining a diverse range of staff from many different backgrounds who have the ambition to create a University which seeks to fulfil our social, cultural and economic obligation to Cardiff, Wales, and the world.  In supporting our employees to achieve a balance between their work and their personal lives, we will also consider proposals for flexible working or job share arrangements. 

Cardiff University offers many excellent benefits, including 37 days annual leave (plus bank holidays) pro-rata for part-time hours, pension scheme, blended working (meaning you may be able to work from home for some of your time, depending on business needs), a cycle to work scheme and other travel initiatives, and more. It is an exciting and vibrant place to work, with many different challenges and is a proud Living Wage supporter.

Cardiff University is a signatory to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which means that in hiring and promotion decisions we will evaluate applicants on the quality of their research, not publication metrics or the identity of the journal in which the research is published. More information is available at:  Responsible research assessment - Research - Cardiff University