Research Assistant/Associate – Digital Twin Development
Requisition ID: 29417
Location: Newcastle, GB
Contract Type: Fixed Term
Working Pattern: Full Time
Salary: Research Assistant: £33,951 to £36,636 per annumResearch Associate: £36,636 to £46,069 per annum
Duration: 21 months
Benefits include a generous holiday package, the ability to buy additional leave days, a strong pension scheme, and various health and wellbeing initiatives.
Overview
We invite you to join the School of Engineering as a Research Assistant/Associate in Digital Twin Development. You will work in the NU‑DICE Lab and contribute to the WILSON Horizon Europe project, coordinating work with 15 EU partners.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and implement modules for federated digital twin technologies, including dashboards for visualizing buildings, districts, and city‑scale data.
- Connect diverse datasets and use cases (energy and non‑energy services) and collaborate with partners on federated data access mechanisms (IDS connectors and API).
- Support the development of use cases by enabling data sharing and utilisation across domains.
- Utilize the Newcastle Urban Observatory to demonstrate the federated digital twin approach and represent the university at project meetings across Europe.
- Assist in testing research outcomes in WILSON living labs and large‑scale pilots, e.g., the Newcastle Helix.
- Lead the technical development of digital twin interfaces, dashboards, and visualisation platforms for building, district, and city‑scale applications (for Research Associate).
- Design and implement BIM/GIS/IoT data integration workflows, including IFC, geospatial, semantic, time‑series and operational datasets.
- Develop federated digital twin approaches, including APIs, data access mechanisms, semantic interoperability workflows and data‑sharing processes.
- Determine appropriate technical and research methodologies, contribute original ideas to the project’s digital twin architecture and demonstrators.
- Attend and contribute to regular project update meetings, consortium meetings and technical partner meetings.
- Contribute to the writing up of research, including reports, papers and presentations, and assist in grant applications.
- Supply or coordinate own work with others, problem‑solve to achieve research objectives and support planning of the research.
- Present research findings to project leaders and wider audiences, including conferences and publications.
- Fetch, analyse, and interpret research data, draw conclusions, and supply input into dissemination.
- Support the use of research resources, including laboratories and specialist equipment.
Qualifications & Experience
- Knowledge of BIM, IFC, Open BIM, GIS and/or IoT data integration for built‑environment applications.
- Experience in processing, managing and visualising heterogeneous datasets, including building, geospatial, sensor, time‑series or operational data.
- Experience in scripting and data processing using Python or similar languages, including data cleaning, API integration and visualisation.
- Attention to detail and ability to work at a high level of accuracy.
- Strong presentation skills and ability to communicate complex information effectively.
- Proven ability to analyse data, write‑up results and collaborate with colleagues.
- Excellent IT skills in all major office applications.
- Personal initiative and creativity to solve research problems.
- MSc or near‑completion PhD in Building/Construction Informatics, Computing or Engineering (Civil, Architectural, Mechanical, Electrical) or related fields (for Research Assistant). PhD required for Research Associate.
- Leadership and substantial contributions to federated digital twin dashboards (Research Associate). Awareness of Data Spaces governance, semantic interoperability frameworks, and research environments.
- High analytical and problem‑solving capacity and strong communication skills (Research Associate).
- Experience with conference presentations and high‑quality publications (Research Associate).
Attributes & Behaviour
- Positive collaboration within a multi‑skilled research team.
- Ability to negotiate, prioritise and meet multiple deadlines.
- Commitment to continuous professional development.
- Understanding of equality, inclusion and diversity best practice.
Contact & Application
Please submit an up‑to‑date CV and a supporting statement outlining how you meet the essential and desirable criteria via the application link. For further information or informal discussion, contact Prof Mohamad Kassem (Mohamad.kassem@newcastle.ac.uk) or Dr Xiang Xie (Xiang.xie@newcastle.ac.uk). Newcastle University is an equal opportunities employer and a Disability Confident employer.
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