Research Associate

About Us

You will be part of an active research programme in the Heat and Fire Lab (https://heatandfire.github.io/) in the Department of Engineering at King’s College London.

About the role

We are looking to appoint a full-time (1.0 FTE) Research Associate as part of a Faraday Institution funded project on battery fire modelling, specifically focusing on thermal runaway and cell-to-cell propagation of flaming combustion. The role-holder will be part of a larger team on the SAFEBATT Project, major grant of the faraday institution, being led by UCL. At King’s, you will be joining a department with new laboratory facilities.

The post is funded until 29th March 2026.

The research in this project at King’s will help develop a full model that integrates a thermal electrical coupled battery model, a chemical kinetics model and a flame dynamics model to provide a tool that can be used to predict battery fire propagation and flame properties as well as heat transfer feedback to predict cell-to-cell propagation.

This project will lay the foundation to enable:

• Design of safer battery packs.
• Quantification of hot gases and flames emanating from ruptured battery cells
• Quantification of heat generation and fire propagation in varying realistic operating conditions for battery packs.

Candidates with a background in Fire Science, and battery safety modelling particularly encouraged to apply.

This is a full-time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed-term contract until 29/03/2026.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

• PhD in Mechanical Engineering or in an area related to Fire Safety Engineering*
• Good knowledge and research experiences in modelling lithium-ion battery fires especially for NMC/LFP/LCO cathode types.
• Publications in battery fire safety or closely related area in peer-reviewed journals.
• Proficiency in a Multiphysics software (COMSOL or related) and fire dynamics simulation software (FDS or similar)
• Knowledge of lithium-ion battery thermal processes
• Proficiency in Chemical Kinetics software (Cantera or similar)
• Experience in thermal runaway modelling or experiments

* Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the next page after you click the “Apply”button, above. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further Information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's. 

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

Interviews are due to be held in September 2025.

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