The Alan Turing Institute is the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. The Institute is named in honour of the scientist Alan Turing and its mission is to make great leaps in data science and artificial intelligence research in order to change the world for the better.

We are recruiting a TPS Senior Researcher who will lead on participatory citizen science and who will work to mentor, train and embed the expertise from the TPS, Turing Way and broader open source and citizen involvement communities across the Turing Institute. Their goal is to ensure that we are embedding our values of inclusion, engagement and agency in projects so that they deliver FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) outputs that are greater than the sum of their parts, and scale to be adopted worldwide and beyond the end of the current funding.

The Artificial Intelligence for Multiple Long Term Conditions (AIM) Research Support Facility (RSF) is a £3 million National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funded project to support research teams from around the UK in their efforts to systematically identify new clusters of disease and the development of conditions over the life course.

AutSPACEs is a co-created, participatory, open source, citizen-science platform which will be used to investigate how sensory processing differences affect the daily experiences of autistic people. The platform builds on the Open Humans framework to allow fine-grained control over contributor's data and how it is used.

The AIM RSF has been created to ensure that the funded research projects work together efficiently to answer questions relevant to patients and the general public. As part of the Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPI/E) workstream we will adapt the AutSPACEs citizen science platform to the MLTC community. This activity will be co-created with patients with a goal of sharing their experiences of navigating the health care system as people living with multiple long term conditions.

You can find key information about the AIM RSF, AutSPACEs, the Tools, Practices and Systems (TPS) programme and The Turing Way in the full job description attached to this advertisement.

ROLE PURPOSE

TPS Senior Researchers are permanent staff members at The Alan Turing Institute and leaders in their field of expertise. They are members of the TPS Leadership Team and are expected to represent the Institute to a broad community of stakeholders across the national and international data science and open source ecosystems. We anticipate that the postholder will need to embody the values of leadership, initiative and understanding, in addition to their commitment to equity and inclusion as described in the Turing's Values.

The TPS Senior Researcher for participatory citizen science will be invited invited to join the AutSPACEs project as a co-lead investigator with Dr Kirstie Whitaker. In this role they would take responsibility for the strategic and operational development of the project and in doing so will have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of community leadership, the real world implementation of ethical practices, and the sustainability of open source projects.

The postholder will oversee the delivery of open source infrastructure built using Django (Python) on the Open Humans data management infrastructure. Although we do not expect all applicants to have web development skills we do expect them to be able to learn at pace and to effectively mentor developers within the Turing and from across the open source project communities including ethics researchers in Turing’s Public Policy Programme, the NIHR PPI/E team, PPI/E teams advising and collaborating with individual research projects within the AIM investment, the existing AutSPACEs and Open Humans communities, the Autistica Discovery Network, and the TPS and Turing Way communities.

The TPS Senior Researcher for citizen science will manage a small team of researchers, research software engineers, and a community manager to deliver a framework that meets the AutSPACEs and NIHR AIM RSF requirements, and that is extendable to new research questions. They will bring together experts – including experts by lived experience – who work on different projects and across distributed communities. The post holder will understand the challenges of these participants’ diverse responsibilities and customise their mentorship to the needs of each individual.

The postholder will work closely with Dr Kirstie Whitaker and Prof Chris Holmes, lead investigators of the NIHR AIM RSF, and Mrs Lynsey Cross, AIM RSF Theme Lead for PPI/E and Public Engagement Officer for the Population Data Science Department at Swansea University. They will also collaborate closely with Dr Malvika Sharan, TPS Senior Researcher and co-lead investigator (with Kirstie Whitaker) of The Turing Way, and Dr Bastian Greshake, Open Humans Director of Research and a long term fellow at the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity in Paris. Dr Kirstie Whitaker will be their line manager.

DUTIES AND AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY

• Conduct original interdisciplinary academic research by contributing to existing funded projects and by pursuing your own research interests in digital infrastructure and related areas. Curate, implement and advance community practices for open source infrastructure and promote them in the research projects at the Institute.
• Foster communities of citizen scientists with lived experience of multiple long term conditions or sensory processing differences and open source developers, with a particular focus on growing the overlap between those groups. Bring together domain experts to design, adapt and build the citizen science platform and responsibly manage the data.
• Line manage a team of participatory citizen science researchers. Direct their activities on a daily basis, provide mentorship to ensure they have the information and skills they need to perform their duties and responsibilities, bringing in support from across the TPS Programme as necessary.
• Catalyse connections and collaboration between researchers across the Institute, with a particular focus on bringing together teams working to involved and engage member of the public in data science projects.
• Be an active community member of The Turing Way project. This may include writing new content, reviewing existing chapters, or giving presentations about the project to new audiences.

Please see the job description for a full breakdown of the duties and responsibilities as well as the person specification.

Essential

• PhD or equivalent level of industry experience
• Experience in participatory and community-led co-creation or team science
• Track record of publishing articles, FAIR data sets, white papers and/or open source software libraries for a diverse audience including academics, policy makers and/or software engineers.
• Basic coding skills in any programming language.
• Git for version control and Github or GitLab for project management.
• Leads and directs with responsibility for developing, communicating, and implementing action plans and objectives linked to the Instittue’s strategy.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

If you are interested in this opportunity, please click the apply button below. You will need to register on the applicant portal and complete the application form including your CV and covering letter. If you have questions about the role or would like to apply using a different format, please contact us on 020 3862 3546, or email [email protected].

CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: Sunday 27 March at 23:59

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

This full time post is offered on a permanent basis. The annual salary is £56,840 plus excellent benefits, including flexible working and family friendly policies, https://www.turing.ac.uk/work-turing/why-work-turing/employee-benefits

This post is also open to those that wish to join us on a part-time basis or a job share who can commit to between 50% to 100% Full Time Equivalent.

If the role is filled as a job share, hours will be semi-flexible, however some overlapping working hours will be required for communication between the Senior Researchers who job share this post, and the majority of the working week will need to have cover available on any given day.

EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

The Alan Turing Institute is committed to creating an environment where diversity is valued and everyone is treated fairly. In accordance with the Equality Act, we welcome applications from anyone who meets the specific criteria of the post regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

We are committed to building a diverse community and would like our leadership teal to reflect this. We therefore welcome applications from the broadest spectrum of backgrounds.

Reasonable adjustments to the interview process will be made for any candidates with a disability.

We particularly encourage applicants who:

• have experience or knowledge or understanding algorithmic bias and algorithmic oppression;
• consider themselves disabled or neurodivergent; or
• who have friends or family members who have lived experience of multiple long term conditions.

We acknowledge the importance of understanding the intersectionality of these lived experiences with experiences associated with the candidate’s ethnicity, gender, sexuality, race, age and class.

Please note all offers of employment are subject to obtaining and retaining the right to work in the UK and satisfactory pre-employment security screening which includes a DBS Check.

Full details on the pre-employment screening process can be requested from [email protected].

This role is located at The Alan Turing Institute, 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB.

From March 2022, The Alan Turing Institute will trial a Hybrid Working Model for an initial six-month trial period. The Initial expectation is that staff will be based at the above location for at least 2-4 days per month.

Remote working days will be subject to the operational and role requirements and are to be agreed with the Line Manager.