Postdoctoral Research Associate in Computer Science

The Role and Department

You will be hosted at the Department of Computer Science at Durham University. The Department hosts well-equipped labs with on-site capabilities comprising vehicle-mounted sensors (LiDAR, radar, camera, GPS/IMU), drone operations, on/off-road robotics, high-precision geo-localisation, BCI/EEG bio-signal data collection, robotic arm manipulation, X-ray security imaging, virtual reality and on-demand wide-area surveillance video feeds.

In addition, Durham University hosts the UK regional supercomputer, Bede (128 NVIDIA V100 GPUs) which complements our departmental NVIDIA CUDA Compute Cluster (80+ GPUs up to NVIDIA A100) to cater for the increasing GPU compute demands of modern AI-driven research projects.

The Department itself is based in the newly built Mathematical and Computer Sciences building - a £42 million, 9,160m2 state-of-the-art research and education facility, located on the University's Upper Mountjoy Campus co-located with the Department of Mathematics.

The Role

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Computer Science with a particular emphasis on artificial intelligence design and development. The post will focus on developing cutting-edge AI architecture with sensing hardware for small-object tracking, contributing to real-world challenges in space technology. The successful candidate will work on research and development at the intersection of AI, sensing, and space systems.

The post is a part of the SpaceWatch project led by Prof. Hubert P. H. Shum, which focuses on deployable ground-based sensors for the detection, tracking and characterisation of space objects to support sustainable space operations. As space becomes increasingly congested with satellites and debris, the project brings together expertise in AI, sensing, telescopes, digital twins and edge computing to develop practical and trusted tracking capability.

The post is supervised by Prof. Hubert P. H. Shum, who is a Professor of Visual Computing and the Director of Research for the Department of Computer Science at Durham University, specialising in modelling spatio-temporal information with responsible AI. He is also a Co-Founder and the Co-Director of Durham Space Research Centre. He chaired conferences such as Pacific Graphics, BMVC and SCA. He has authored over 200 research publications in the fields of Computer Vision, Computer Graphics and AI in Healthcare, underpinned by Responsible AI designs and algorithms. More information about Prof. Shum and his research team can be found on https://hubertshum.com