24-29 St Giles', Oxford

We invite applications for Postdoctoral Research Associate positions to join the New Approaches to Bayesian Data Science: Tackling Challenges from the Health Sciences programme. This is an exciting, cross-disciplinary research project that will develop new methods for Bayesian statistics that are fit-for-purpose to tackle contemporary Health Science challenges: such as real-time inference and prediction for large scale epidemics; or synthesizing information from distinct data sources for large scale studies such as the UK Biobank. Methodological challenges will be around making Bayesian methods scalable to big-data and robust to (unavoidable) model errors.

This £3M programme is funded by EPSRC, and brings together research groups from the Universities of Lancaster, Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford and Warwick. We are seeking applications for five Research Associate positions to build a team that will work on developing new Bayesian and Computational Statistical methods, motivated and applied to challenges from Health. Active collaboration across the partner institutions, and with other project partners, is expected. There is either a 4 or a 3 year position available at each of these five partner institutions.

You should have, or be close to completing, a PhD in statistics or a related discipline. You will work directly with the investigators to undertake and support the research necessary to achieve your university's aims within the grant. This will include, for example, publishing in leading statistical/application journals, presentation of research at workshops and conferences, developing code implementing new statistical methods, and active involvement in project meetings. You will be experienced in one or more of the following areas: Bayesian statistics, computational statistics, statistical machine learning, statistical genetics, inference for epidemics. You will have demonstrated the ability to develop new statistical methodology. We are particularly keen to encourage applicants with strong computational skills, and are looking to put together a team of researchers with skills that cover theoretical, methodological and applied statistics. A demonstrable ability to produce ac  ademic writing of the highest publishable quality is essential.

The application process is being administered by Lancaster University, apart from the vacancy at Cambridge University. Applicants must apply through Lancaster University’s website for the Lancaster, Oxford, Bristol and Warwick posts. Please ensure you state clearly which position or positions you wish to be considered for when applying.

Further details, including access to the online application process is available here: http://hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=A2232

Candidates who are considering making an application are strongly encouraged to contact Professor Paul Fearnhead (p.fearnhead@lancaster.ac.uk), Sylvia Richardson (sylvia.richardson@mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk), Christophe Andrieu (c.andrieu@bristol.ac.uk) , Chris Holmes (c.holmes@stats.ox.ac.uk) or Gareth Roberts (Gareth.O.Roberts@warwick.ac.uk) to discuss the programme in greater detail.

Positions are available immediately for a fixed-term of 4 years (posts at Bristol, Cambridge, Lancaster and Warwick) or 3 years (post at Oxford).

The closing date for applications is 12.00 noon on 26 April 2018.

https://www.recruit.ox.ac.uk/pls/hrisliverecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.jobspec?p_id=134153