Research Associate in the Development of Microbatteries and Tracking Tags for Insect Tracking

Job description:

Overview

We have an exciting, cross-disciplinary role, working as part of a team to develop a novel insect tracking system that could lead to new insights in animal intelligence and have spin-out opportunities. This role develops the vital microbattery power source for these tags. The overall project develops a novel tracking method that expands animal tracking to a huge range of species, which will lead to a revolution in movement ecology.

To enable this we need light-weight microbatteries. You will initially focus on the development of these micropower solutions: building on proof-of-concept work, you will develop production-scalable approaches for sub-10mg lithium microbatteries, with over 150μAh capacity. The battery is likely to have many other applications (with a possible spin-out to allow us to scale production). You will also build on initial work experimenting with thin-film solar as an alternative approach. In the next phase, as well as supporting tag deployment you will develop novel electrically-small antenna (guided by Dr Stephen Henthorn) using extreme meandering and metamaterial-inspired approaches.

You will be working as part of a friendly and supportive, highly cross-disciplinary team including PhDs, RF-engineers, other PDRAs and ecologists, giving you the opportunity to learn new skills and experience and publish in several fields. You will be based in Sheffield but may visit Exeter to support collaborators deploying the system. The wide range of disciplines involved means that you will have a great opportunity to move into several future areas (battery chemistry, machine learning, movement ecology, RF-engineering, electronics etc).

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