Research Associate

Role Description Department

The Department of Computer Science at the University of York has been a centre of excellence in teaching and research for over fifty years. We are a top 10 UK computer science department and a top 10 university (as ranked by the Times Higher) in the most recent national HE research assessment exercise (REF 2021). Also, the University of York has a Gold TEF teaching award. As such, we are one of only four universities in the UK that have both top 10 REF and gold TEF.

Role

A 2-year post-doctoral research associate position is available at the Cyber Security & Privacy Research Group, Department of Computer Science, University of York, to work on a research project at the intersection of cyber security and AI.

You will be part of the multi-disciplinary project: Participatory Harm Auditing Workbenches & Methodologies (PHAWM, webpage: https://phawm.org), working closely with the primary investigator of the project at York, Dr. Siamak Shahandashti, colleagues at 7 universities across the UK, and several industrial project partners.

The project aims to develop privacy-preserving audit methodologies and workbenches for a range of stakeholders of identified predictive AI solutions across health and media content use cases and generative AI solutions across cultural heritage and collaborative content creation use cases.

Ideally, you’d need to have in-depth knowledge and experience of one of the following areas and a willingness to learn about the other:

• Cyber security and privacy, including applied cryptography, privacy-enhancing technologies, secure multi-party computation, or usable security
• AI and machine learning, including predictive and generative models or federated learning

We are specifically looking for candidates that are comfortable with working in multidisciplinary teams and have a drive to carry out and publish good research.

Skills, Experience & Qualification needed

• Undergraduate degree in Computer Science or a closely related field
• PhD in Computer Science or a closely related field, or equivalent experience
• Knowledge in (a) cyber security and privacy or (b) AI and machine learning to engage in high quality research
• Knowledge of a range of research techniques and methodologies
• Highly developed communication skills to engage effectively with a wide ranging audience, both orally and in writing, using a range of media
• Ability to write up research work for publication in high profile journals and engage in public dissemination
• Experience of carrying out both independent and collaborative research
• Experience of writing up research work for publication
• Attention to detail and commitment to high quality
• Collaborative ethos
• Please see the job description for the full list

Interview date: TBC

For informal enquiries: please contact Siamak Shahandashti on siamak.shahandashti@york.ac.uk

The University strives to be diverse and inclusive – a place where we can ALL be ourselves.

We particularly encourage applications from people who identify as Black, Asian or from a Minority Ethnic background, who are underrepresented at the University.

We offer family friendly, flexible working arrangements, with forums and inclusive facilities to support our staff. #EqualityatYork

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