"Research Associate (Adaptive Mesh Refinement)"

About us

Recently re-founded, the Department of Engineering is rapidly expanding into a world-class research and teaching department.

Research currently focuses on computational engineering, information processing systems, robotics, telecommunications, and biomedical engineering, but we are looking to establish new research themes.

This post will be affiliated with the computational engineering research group within the department.

We offer both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, with a distinctive approach, combining both traditional teaching methods with modern, project-based learning, catering for the needs of our students and the industries in which they will work.

As a new department we have invested in new laboratories and maker space at the centre of the Strand campus in the heart of central London.

For more information: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/engineering

About the role

This role will support the delivery of a mesh generation project, funded under a recent major £7m EPSRC Programme Grant REMODEL: Advancing Parallel Mesh Generation and Geometry Representation to Enable Industrially Relevant, High-Fidelity Simulations. The goal of REMODEL is to make major advances in mesh generation and CAD geometry to enable large-scale exascale-capable simulations for the new UK national supercomputer.

The successful candidate will work within Prof. David Moxey’s group at King’s, together with the wider REMODEL project team (Swansea University, Imperial College London, EPCC and Queen’s University Belfast), to advance adaptive mesh refinement: the ability to dynamically change resolution as large-scale simulations progress, whilst preserving the geometric representation of the project.

You will work within a leading group in high-order methods: a class of finite element methods that is now leading the way for future computational fluid dynamics simulations. Specifically, our group develops the Nektar++ spectral/hp element framework (www.nektar.info), and its mesh generation tool NekMesh. The successful candidate will be expected to lead developments of both tools, working towards integrated mesh-solver cycles and enable large-scale parallel simulations that adapt the mesh to fit the underlying geometry. They will also provide NekMesh with the user-focused development required to get this presently-specialist tool into the hands of general practitioners.

The successful candidate will also help to represent the developments at King’s and work closely with the REMODEL partners in academia, as well as industrial partners.

This is a full time contract (35 Hours per week), offered on a fixed term contract for two years.

Research staff at King’s are entitled to at least 10 days per year (pro-rata) for professional development. This entitlement, from the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, applies to Postdocs, Research Assistants, Research and Teaching Technicians, Teaching Fellows and AEP equivalent up to and including grade 7. Visit the Centre for Research Staff Development for more information.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Have, or be about to obtain, a PhD or equivalent qualification/experience in a related field of study (e.g. applied mathematics, computational engineering, scientific computing, etc).
2. Strong scientific computing background, with experience of different architectures (e.g. CPUs/GPUs) and their use in high-performance computing through shared or distributed parallel programming (e.g. OpenMP, MPI).
3. Strong programming ability in C++ or a related language.
4. Experience in working as part of a research team and ability to collaborate with external partners.
5. A track record of publications and research appropriate to the candidate’s career stage.
6. Excellent organisation ability and written and verbal communication skills.

Desirable criteria

1. Knowledge and/or experience in high-order methods and/or mesh generation is highly desirable.
2. Experience with the Nektar++ spectral/hp element framework and its mesh generator, NekMesh.
3. Experience of postgraduate supervision.

Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6.

Further Information

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

Grade and Salary: £45,031 - £48,607 per annum, including London Weighting Allowance
Job ID: 133865
Close Date: 21-Jan-2026
Contact Person: Professor David Moxey
Contact Details: David.moxey@kcl.ac.uk