location_onEdinburgh, UK
watch_later Posted: Nov 07, 2024
Skills Required
Nice To Have skills
Job Description
Job Description
Grade UE07: £40,247 to £47,874 per annum, pro rata.
School of Informatics / College of Science and Engineering
Part time: 12 hours per week
Fixed Term: For 6 months
The School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, invites applications for a research associate for the project “UK Co-Benefits Atlas” to help with user-centered design and co-design of an interactive and visual web data-platform to visualize and communicate data around socio-economic co-benefits of C02-emission reduction in the UK. The position is funded for the equivalent of 25% from now until end of July 2025 (Grade 7).
The Opportunity
The main task of the job is to coordinate and run the stakeholder engagement with future Atlas stakeholders partner institutions (see below) and to lead the co-design focus groups. The goal is to a) better understand the needs for communicating co-benefits data and b) to design respective visualisation and user interface designs for the atlas. The ideal candidate has experience in user-centered and co-design as well as visualization design, both through practice and an academic work. The job is embedded into an interdisciplinary team including a software engineer as well as researchers in visualization, HCI, and co-benefits.
The UK Co-Benefits Atlas project is a new project by researchers from Design Informatics/VisHub lab, the School of Informatics, the University of St. Andrews and the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute.
Current research from the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute (ECCI), using a model developed for the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), finds that for every 1£ spent on climate change mitigation in the UK there are as much as 14£ of social benefits in the form of improved public health, better urban connectivity, and increased productivity. Here, we ask the question, How can we communicate these findings to inform and accelerate climate action?
To address this question, this project we will co-create an interactive web-based data interface—the UK Co-Benefits Atlas (UKCBA). UKCBA will make co-benefits data and analyses more accessible, understandable, and useful for businesses, investors, researchers, third sector organisations and policymakers across Scotland and the wider UK. Compared to traditional static reports and research papers, visualization atlases are a novel and comprehensive means that provide interactive visualisations, in-depth analyses, and contextual explanations to explore data in a structured and accessible way; for examples, see https://vis-atlas.github.io].
The ECCI modelling team, which is part of our project core-team (Dr. Andrew Sudmant), provides 17 co-benefits for 1000 possible climate interventions in 57,000 UK datazones (lower-layer super output areas, LSOAs) across the UK. This project will enable us to co-create an interactive visualization atlas with its future users and stakeholders; for this project we already have strong commitment from 9 Scottish partners across academia, business, and the public sector (see below), stating the need of such an atlas and which are highly invested in supporting the project through attending workshops and helping with its co-design. The result will be a collaboratively created, cutting-edge, and first-of-its-kind platform capable of facilitating interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaborations and decision making between diverse stakeholders around the complex socio-economic benefits of climate interventions.
The project envisions facilitation and co-design of an interactive web-based data interface, the UK Co-benefits Atlas, to visualise emission reduction co-benefits on, e.g., health, energy bills and other measures, across the entire UK [1]. Inspired by our previous analysis of visualization atlases [2], this project will co-design and deploy a first version of the atlas, informed by extensive engagement with future atlas stakeholders such as the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods, PWC Sustainability, and Department of Energy Security and Net Zero. By the open data and analyses published through our atlas, we aim to inform decision making by businesses seeking commercial net zero opportunities, communities and policy makers with net zero mandates, researchers and analysts examining the socio-economic co-benefits of net zero interventions.
The successful candidate will be embedded within the VisHub research group (vishub.net, Benjamin Bach) at Informatics and EFI as well as the ECCI (Andrew Sudmant) and St. Andrews (Sean Field)
Tasks and responsibilities
[2] Wang, J., Shu X., Bach B., Hinrichs U., (2024). Visualization Atlases: Explaining and Exploring Complex Topics through Data, Visualization, and Narration. Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.07483
This post is advertised as part-time (7-10 hours per week), however, we are open to flexible working patterns. We are also open to considering requests for hybrid working (on a non-contractual basis) that combines a mix of remote and regular on-campus working.
Please include the following documents in your application
Other Project Staff
Benjamin Bach (https://vishub.net/bach) is a Reader in Design Informatics and Visualization at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh as well as a research scientist at the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) within the Bivwac Team , Bordeaux. His research analyses, designs, and evaluates visualization techniques for data analysis, exploration, and communication. Benjamin is co-leading the VisHub research group ( https://vishub.net ) at the School of Informatics and the Edinburgh Futures Institute. He will coordinate the design and co-creation part of the work, most of the time remotely from Bordeaux but joining for some of the workshops in Edinburgh.
Sean Field is Director of Policy for the Centre for Energy Ethics and he leads the Financial Pathways branch of the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods. Over the last several years his research examines the ethical, economic and financial valuation of energy resources.He also works as a Lead Analyst for the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero where he provides analytical leadership and strategic economic policy evaluation advice within its Local Net Zero Programme.
Andrew Sudmant ( https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=ouhz-GsAAAAJhl=en ) is a researcher at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute. Andrews research focuses on quantifying and mapping the co-benefits of climate action in the UK. His work at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute and with other collaborators has led to the development of models that estimate social, economic, and environmental benefits from climate interventions. One notable finding from his latest research shows that for every £1 spent on climate mitigation, up to £14 in social benefits are realized, particularly in areas like public health and urban connectivity.
Alexis Pister is data visualization engineer working on visual analytics applications often applied to the humanities and using network, temporal, and spatial visualization techniques. He will support the atlas prototyping through web-development.
Contact details for enquiries (name and email address): Benjamin Bach ( )
As a valued member of our team you can expect:
The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality.
Prior to any employment commencing with the University you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK. Further information is available on our right to work webpages (opens new browser tab)
The University is unable to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role. International applicants will therefore be unable to apply for and secure a Skilled Worker visa. They will only be able to take up this role if they can demonstrate an alternative right to work in the UK.
Key dates to note
The closing date for applications is 12th November 2024.
Unless stated otherwise the closing time for applications is 11:59pm GMT. If you are applying outside the UK the closing time on our adverts automatically adjusts to your browsers local time zone.
About Us
As a world-leading research-intensive University, we are here to address tomorrow’s greatest challenges. Between now and 2030 we will do that with a values-led approach to teaching, research and innovation, and through the strength of our relationships, both locally and globally.
About The Team
Informatics is the study of how natural and artificial systems store, process and communicate information. Research in Informatics promises to take information technology to a new level, and to place information at the heart of 21st century science, technology and society. The School enjoys collaborations across many disciplines in the University, spanning all three College, and also participates as a strategic partner in the Alan Turing Institute and, with Heriot-Watt University, in the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics.
The School provides a fertile environment for a wide range of studies focused on understanding computation in both artificial and natural systems. It attracts students around the world to study in our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and currently has approximately 1000 undergraduate students, 320 MSc students and 350 PhD students. Informatics is one of seven schools in the College of Science and Engineering, at the University of Edinburgh. It is recognised for the employability of its graduates (demand exceeds supply), its contributions to entrepreneurship, and the excellence of its research. Since the first Research Assessment Exercise in 1986, Informatics at Edinburgh has consistently been assessed to have more internationally excellent and world-class research than any other submission in Computer Science and Informatics. The latest REF 2014 results have again confirmed that ours is the largest concentration of internationally excellent research in the UK. This contributes to our ranking in the top 15 CS departments world-wide according to the latest Times Higher Education ranking.
We aim to ensure that our culture and systems support flexible and family-friendly working and recognise and value diversity across all our staff and students. The School has an active programme offering support and professional development for all staff; providing mentoring, training, and networking opportunities.
Grade UE07: £40,247 to £47,874 per annum, pro rata.
School of Informatics / College of Science and Engineering
Part time: 12 hours per week
Fixed Term: For 6 months
The School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, invites applications for a research associate for the project “UK Co-Benefits Atlas” to help with user-centered design and co-design of an interactive and visual web data-platform to visualize and communicate data around socio-economic co-benefits of C02-emission reduction in the UK. The position is funded for the equivalent of 25% from now until end of July 2025 (Grade 7).
The Opportunity
The main task of the job is to coordinate and run the stakeholder engagement with future Atlas stakeholders partner institutions (see below) and to lead the co-design focus groups. The goal is to a) better understand the needs for communicating co-benefits data and b) to design respective visualisation and user interface designs for the atlas. The ideal candidate has experience in user-centered and co-design as well as visualization design, both through practice and an academic work. The job is embedded into an interdisciplinary team including a software engineer as well as researchers in visualization, HCI, and co-benefits.
The UK Co-Benefits Atlas project is a new project by researchers from Design Informatics/VisHub lab, the School of Informatics, the University of St. Andrews and the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute.
Current research from the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute (ECCI), using a model developed for the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), finds that for every 1£ spent on climate change mitigation in the UK there are as much as 14£ of social benefits in the form of improved public health, better urban connectivity, and increased productivity. Here, we ask the question, How can we communicate these findings to inform and accelerate climate action?
To address this question, this project we will co-create an interactive web-based data interface—the UK Co-Benefits Atlas (UKCBA). UKCBA will make co-benefits data and analyses more accessible, understandable, and useful for businesses, investors, researchers, third sector organisations and policymakers across Scotland and the wider UK. Compared to traditional static reports and research papers, visualization atlases are a novel and comprehensive means that provide interactive visualisations, in-depth analyses, and contextual explanations to explore data in a structured and accessible way; for examples, see https://vis-atlas.github.io].
The ECCI modelling team, which is part of our project core-team (Dr. Andrew Sudmant), provides 17 co-benefits for 1000 possible climate interventions in 57,000 UK datazones (lower-layer super output areas, LSOAs) across the UK. This project will enable us to co-create an interactive visualization atlas with its future users and stakeholders; for this project we already have strong commitment from 9 Scottish partners across academia, business, and the public sector (see below), stating the need of such an atlas and which are highly invested in supporting the project through attending workshops and helping with its co-design. The result will be a collaboratively created, cutting-edge, and first-of-its-kind platform capable of facilitating interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaborations and decision making between diverse stakeholders around the complex socio-economic benefits of climate interventions.
The project envisions facilitation and co-design of an interactive web-based data interface, the UK Co-benefits Atlas, to visualise emission reduction co-benefits on, e.g., health, energy bills and other measures, across the entire UK [1]. Inspired by our previous analysis of visualization atlases [2], this project will co-design and deploy a first version of the atlas, informed by extensive engagement with future atlas stakeholders such as the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods, PWC Sustainability, and Department of Energy Security and Net Zero. By the open data and analyses published through our atlas, we aim to inform decision making by businesses seeking commercial net zero opportunities, communities and policy makers with net zero mandates, researchers and analysts examining the socio-economic co-benefits of net zero interventions.
The successful candidate will be embedded within the VisHub research group (vishub.net, Benjamin Bach) at Informatics and EFI as well as the ECCI (Andrew Sudmant) and St. Andrews (Sean Field)
Tasks and responsibilities
- Organise co-creation focus groups with industry and public sector stakeholders
- Conduct interviews with stakeholders
- Perform qualitative data analysis on interview and focus group results
- Plan and run usability evaluations with partners
- Help design graphical atlas interface, interactions, and visualisations
[2] Wang, J., Shu X., Bach B., Hinrichs U., (2024). Visualization Atlases: Explaining and Exploring Complex Topics through Data, Visualization, and Narration. Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.07483
This post is advertised as part-time (7-10 hours per week), however, we are open to flexible working patterns. We are also open to considering requests for hybrid working (on a non-contractual basis) that combines a mix of remote and regular on-campus working.
Please include the following documents in your application
- CV
- Short motivation statement detailing
- - Why you are interested in this project
- - How you expertise responds to the call
- Link to online portfolio, if available
- Link to publication list, if available (e.g., google scholar)
- Selected relevant publication, if appropriate
- Degree in appropriate field
- PhD (or near completion)
- Strong interest in co-benefits and data analysis
- Interview and questionnaire design
- Qualitative data analysis
- Workshop organisation, facilitation and qualitative data collection
- Visualization / UI design / graphics design
Other Project Staff
Benjamin Bach (https://vishub.net/bach) is a Reader in Design Informatics and Visualization at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh as well as a research scientist at the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) within the Bivwac Team , Bordeaux. His research analyses, designs, and evaluates visualization techniques for data analysis, exploration, and communication. Benjamin is co-leading the VisHub research group ( https://vishub.net ) at the School of Informatics and the Edinburgh Futures Institute. He will coordinate the design and co-creation part of the work, most of the time remotely from Bordeaux but joining for some of the workshops in Edinburgh.
Sean Field is Director of Policy for the Centre for Energy Ethics and he leads the Financial Pathways branch of the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods. Over the last several years his research examines the ethical, economic and financial valuation of energy resources.He also works as a Lead Analyst for the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero where he provides analytical leadership and strategic economic policy evaluation advice within its Local Net Zero Programme.
Andrew Sudmant ( https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=ouhz-GsAAAAJhl=en ) is a researcher at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute. Andrews research focuses on quantifying and mapping the co-benefits of climate action in the UK. His work at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute and with other collaborators has led to the development of models that estimate social, economic, and environmental benefits from climate interventions. One notable finding from his latest research shows that for every £1 spent on climate mitigation, up to £14 in social benefits are realized, particularly in areas like public health and urban connectivity.
Alexis Pister is data visualization engineer working on visual analytics applications often applied to the humanities and using network, temporal, and spatial visualization techniques. He will support the atlas prototyping through web-development.
Contact details for enquiries (name and email address): Benjamin Bach ( )
As a valued member of our team you can expect:
- A competitive salary.
- An exciting, positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work.
- To be part of a diverse and vibrant international community.
- Comprehensive Staff Benefits, such as a generous holiday entitlement, competitive pension schemes, staff discounts, and family-friendly initiatives. Check out the full list on our staff benefits page (opens in a new tab) and use our reward calculator to discover the total value of your pay and benefits.
The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality.
Prior to any employment commencing with the University you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK. Further information is available on our right to work webpages (opens new browser tab)
The University is unable to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role. International applicants will therefore be unable to apply for and secure a Skilled Worker visa. They will only be able to take up this role if they can demonstrate an alternative right to work in the UK.
Key dates to note
The closing date for applications is 12th November 2024.
Unless stated otherwise the closing time for applications is 11:59pm GMT. If you are applying outside the UK the closing time on our adverts automatically adjusts to your browsers local time zone.
About Us
As a world-leading research-intensive University, we are here to address tomorrow’s greatest challenges. Between now and 2030 we will do that with a values-led approach to teaching, research and innovation, and through the strength of our relationships, both locally and globally.
About The Team
Informatics is the study of how natural and artificial systems store, process and communicate information. Research in Informatics promises to take information technology to a new level, and to place information at the heart of 21st century science, technology and society. The School enjoys collaborations across many disciplines in the University, spanning all three College, and also participates as a strategic partner in the Alan Turing Institute and, with Heriot-Watt University, in the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics.
The School provides a fertile environment for a wide range of studies focused on understanding computation in both artificial and natural systems. It attracts students around the world to study in our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and currently has approximately 1000 undergraduate students, 320 MSc students and 350 PhD students. Informatics is one of seven schools in the College of Science and Engineering, at the University of Edinburgh. It is recognised for the employability of its graduates (demand exceeds supply), its contributions to entrepreneurship, and the excellence of its research. Since the first Research Assessment Exercise in 1986, Informatics at Edinburgh has consistently been assessed to have more internationally excellent and world-class research than any other submission in Computer Science and Informatics. The latest REF 2014 results have again confirmed that ours is the largest concentration of internationally excellent research in the UK. This contributes to our ranking in the top 15 CS departments world-wide according to the latest Times Higher Education ranking.
We aim to ensure that our culture and systems support flexible and family-friendly working and recognise and value diversity across all our staff and students. The School has an active programme offering support and professional development for all staff; providing mentoring, training, and networking opportunities.
