Research Assistant/Associate in Semiconductor Devices (Fixed Term)

A position exists for a postdoctoral Research Assistant/Associate to work on the development of novel semiconductor optoelectronic and sensing devices using high-throughput fabrication and characterisation techniques. The role holder will join the Low-Dimensional Electronics Group under the supervision of Dr Jack Alexander-Webber.

The successful individual will have experience working with emerging materials such as semiconductor nanowires, graphene, or two-dimensional semiconductors. They will have experience with designing, fabricating and characterising arrays of devices such as integrated circuits or sensor arrays. Experience generating, processing and analysing large material property datasets including correlating between multiple techniques, or developing computational reconstruction techniques for sensing applications, would also be beneficial.

The successful candidate will be engaged in:

• Developing semiconductor-based optoelectronics, sensors and related functional devices, using arrays of nanomaterials.
• Demonstrating novel device functionalities, generating and analysing multi-technique datasets.
• Designing, building and optimising characterisation systems. This could include a combination of brightfield/darkfield optical microscopy and spectroscopy, optical lithography/patterning, hyperspectral imaging, photocurrent measurements, and sensor characterisation with suitable readout electronics. Programming hardware control and user interfaces for data capture, and automation to enable these techniques.
• Writing and publishing journal papers on experimental findings.
• Playing an active role in the day-to-day supervision of students involved in the project.
• Working cooperatively within a team of academics, researchers and postgraduate students at Cambridge, and collaborating with industrial partners and other UK-based and international universities.

The skills, qualifications and experience required to perform the role are:

• Must have (or be close to obtaining) a PhD in Electronic Engineering, Physics, Materials Science, Chemistry or Nanotechnology.
• Track record of authoring high quality academic publications in field of semiconductors/materials characterisation, and integrated circuit/sensor development.
• Experience and skills designing, building and optimising optical, optoelectronic, material characterisation, lithography, microscopy, sensor characterisation systems.
• Experience and skills in computer programming for hardware control, data acquisition, and automation, computational reconstruction, data correlation.
• Interpersonal and leadership skills as required for interdisciplinary collaborative research project.
• Motivation and enthusiasm for curiosity-driven research.

Appointment at Research Associate level is dependent on having a PhD. Those who have submitted but not yet received their PhD will be appointed at Research Assistant level, which will be amended to Research Associate once the PhD has been awarded.

Salary Ranges:

*Research Assistant: £29,605 - £33,966

*Research Associate: £36,024 - £44,263

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 24 months in the first instance.

To apply online for this vacancy and to view further information about the role, please click the 'Apply' button above. 

Please ensure that you upload your Curriculum Vitae (CV), a covering letter, research publication list and the names and contact details of two referees in the Upload section of the online application. If you upload any additional documents which have not been requested, we will not be able to consider these as part of your application. Please submit your application by midnight on the closing date.

If you have any questions about this vacancy, please contact Dr Jack Alexander-Webber (jaa59@cam.ac.uk) for queries of a technical nature related to the role and Sue Murkett (sm330@cam.ac.uk) for queries related to the application process.

The University actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion and encourages applications from all sections of society.

The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK.

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