Research Associate

Department

The School of Physics, Engineering and Technology brings physicists and engineers together to push the frontiers of knowledge, foster innovation and meet the grand challenges facing society. Our aim is to deliver world-leading research in both fundamental and applied areas whilst developing new technologies that work for the public good, in an environment where everyone can thrive.

As a School, equality, diversity, and inclusion are central to our culture and we strive to provide a working environment which allows all staff and students to contribute fully, to flourish, and to excel. We aim to ensure that there is a supportive and egalitarian culture at all levels and across all staff groups and offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, staff engagement forums, campus facilities and services to support staff from different backgrounds. We are proud to hold Juno Champion and Athena Swan silver awards, which recognise our commitment to creating an equitable and fully inclusive environment in which staff and students can thrive. We aim to inspire young people to engage with science and engineering through our outreach work.  

The PDRA will work in the Robot-assisted Living Lab in close collaboration with Fairlamb Group in the Chemistry department. The wider team includes PhD students from ALBERT CDT (Autonomous Robotic Systems for Laboratory Experiments).

Role

The PDRA will work in the intersection of AI/Robotics and Chemistry for our Human – AI Teaming for Chemistry (HATCH) project funded by AIChemy Frointer Fund. The ultimate goal of HATCH is to enable Physical AI (robot manipulators, automated handling units) working with human chemists collaboratively, conducting frontier synthetic chemistry experiments. 

Skills, Experience & Qualification needed

You will have:

• PhD (or close to completion) in Robotics, Computer Science, or a closely related field.
• A strong track record of high-quality research publications in top-tier journals or conferences relevant to robotics (e.g., ICRA/IROS, RSS, CoRL, RAL, TRO, IJRR or other similar venues).
• Robot Manipulation: Hands-on experience programming and controlling robot manipulators (e.g., UR, Franka Emika) and end-effectors for precise tasks.
• Software Proficiency: Strong proficiency in ROS/ROS2 (Robot Operating System) and hardware-software communication protocols.
• Programming: Advanced programming skills in Python and standard ML libraries 
• Human-AI Collaboration: Understanding of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), shared autonomy, or collaborative decision-making frameworks.

Desirable to have:

• Experience working with Large Language Models (LLMs) or Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models, particularly in grounding text/code generation into physical robot actions.
• Strong willingness and enthusiasm to learn synthetic chemistry workflows, laboratory safety protocols, and chemical domain knowledge.
• Prior experience collaborating with scientists outside of core computer science/engineering (e.g., chemists, biologists, physicists) is highly valued.

Interview date: To be confirmed

For informal enquiries: please contact Dr Jihong Zhu (Jihong.zhu@york.ac.uk) and pet-admin@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

As a Disability Confident employer, we will ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants that meet the minimum (essential) criteria for each position will be offered an interview. Read more about the University of York’s commitments under the Disability Confident scheme.

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