A great opportunity has arisen in our School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering for a Senior Research Officer to work on the Horizon 2020 project “POTION: Promoting social interaction through emotional body odours
Department and project consortium
The School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, the Department of Psychology, and the Essex Brain-Computer Interfaces and Neural Engineering Lab are pleased to announce this postdoctoral position in the Horizon 2020 project “POTION: Promoting social interaction through emotional body odours”. The project started in January 2019 and includes partners from the Universities of Pisa (Italy), Padova (Italy), and Essex (UK), the Universitat Politecnica De Valencia (Spain), the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), and the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), and three companies ISPA CRL (Portougal), SRA Instruments (France) and Feel-Ing s.r.l. (Italy). POTION works on a novel technological paradigm to delve deeper into understanding meaningful social interaction, combining new knowledge about the chemical composition of human social chemosignals together with a novel olfactory-based technology designed to drive social behaviour.
Duties of the Role
The Essex team’s work on the project focuses on the development of Bayesian (DCM and Active Inference) computational models of multimodal social interaction. This models are applied to evaluate socially relevant variables, such as trust, presence and inclusion as well as generate optimal stimuli in artificially mediated social interactions. In particular, the models investigate the role of human chemosignals perception in social interactions. The models are identified using neurophysiological data (e.g. EEG), peripheral physiological activation (i.e., ECG, RESP, EDA) and behavioural changes (i.e., f-EMG) collected using VR scenarios of increasing complexity.
The successful applicant will research and develop Bayesian (DCM and Active Inference) computational models of multimodal social interaction and in particular on the role of human chemosignals perception in social interactions. They will also develop robust algorithms for signal processing, statistical inference and extraction of information from EEG and other physiological signals, and contribute to the reporting and dissemination of the project.
Skills and qualifications required
Applicants are expected to hold a PhD in Computational Neuroscience, Brain-computer Interfaces, Neural Engineering, Psychology, Machine Learning, Statistics, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science or a closely related discipline, or equivalent professional experience or practice or be close to completion of PhD. The ideal candidate will have significant experience in computational modelling of social interaction, signal processing, statistical modelling of neural signals and processes, brain-computer interfaces, and virtual reality interfaces. Applicants are also expected to have a strong publication record (relative to their career stage) as first author, ideally including publications in 1st quartile journals in relevant areas. We particularly welcome female applicants and those from an ethnic minority, as they are currently under-represented in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering.
Please see the attached job pack, which contains a full job description and person specification which outlines the full duties, skills, qualifications and experience needed for this role plus more information relating to the post. We recommend you read this information carefully before making an application. Applications should be made on-line, but if you would like advice or help in making an application, or need information in a different format, please contact resourcing@essex.ac.uk
*More information: Working at the University