Research Fellow in Acoustic Feature Analysis for Respiratory Health

Location:  

Highfield Campus

Salary:  

£34,980 to £42,978
per annum

Full Time Fixed Term (until 31/03/2025)

Closing Date:  

Wednesday 20 December 2023

Interview Date:  

Reference:  

2530123DA

You will join us to work on a project named RELOAD which is part of the RCUK initiative on Artificial Intelligence Innovation to Accelerate Health Research. RELOAD is a partnership between the School of Engineering and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton and the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge. The post will be based at the University of Southampton, UK.

RELOAD will devise explainable models for analysing longitudinal audio data (coughing, breathing and speaking), collected from patients’ mobile devices and aimed at predicting respiratory tract infection (RTI) clinical outcomes. You will work to identify sensitive and reliable acoustic features measurable from the audio signal, which are responsive to RTI severity and change of severity over time. The objective is to define a set of features having strong association with clinical progression, robustness to ‘in the wild’ recording, high reliability, and high sensitivity to changes in disease state, and to evaluate and explain their performance as input to machine learning systems.

You will be working with Prof Anna Barney (ISVR) and collaborator Professor Nick Francis (Medicine) as well as with colleagues from the Mobile Systems Research Lab at Cambridge. You need to have a PhD or equivalent professional qualifications and experience in Acoustics, Signal Processing, Biomedical Engineering, Machine Learning or a related discipline. Experience of working with biomedical or acoustics data is an advantage. You will have strong skills in MATLAB or Python for signal analysis and be comfortable working with statistical methods to quantify characteristics of data sets. In addition to undertaking original, state of the art research you will write and submit academic papers, prepare project deliverables, and travel to academic conferences and project meetings to present your work and represent the team.

Applications for Research Fellow positions will be considered from candidates who are working towards or nearing completion of a relevant PhD qualification. The title of Research Fellow will be applied upon successful completion of the PhD.  Prior to the qualification being awarded the title of Senior Research Assistant will be given.

As a university we aim to create an environment where everyone can thrive, and we are proactive in fostering a culture of inclusion, respect and equality of opportunity. We believe that we can only truly meet our objectives if we are reflective of society, so we are passionate about creating a working environment in which you are free to bring your whole self to work. With a generous holiday allowance as well as additional university closure days we are committed to supporting our staff and students and open to a flexible working approach.

Apply by midnight on the closing date. For assistance contact Recruitment on +44(0)2380 592750 or [email protected] quoting the job number.

Further details:

We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and welcome applicants who supports our mission of inclusivity.

Apply by midnight on the closing date. For assistance contact Recruitment on +44(0)2380 592750 or [email protected] quoting the job number.