Research Associate In Artificial Intelligence For Data Analytics

3 Research Associates In Artificial Intelligence For Data Analytics
British Library, London 
£35,000 per annum (negotiable dependent on skills & experience)
Full time
Permanent
15th June 2017

Opportunity for 3 Research Associates to work on advanced methods from artificial intelligence and machine learning to help automate the data analytics process. These posts will be based at the Alan Turing Institute hub at the British Library in London.

The process of transforming a raw dataset into useful knowledge is called data analytics. It comprises many different stages and phases. While some elements of the data analytics process have benefited from considerable development through software or tools, there has been little methodological research into so-called data ‘wrangling’, even though this is often laborious and time-consuming, and accounts for up to 80% of a typical data science project. Data wrangling includes understanding what data is available, integrating data from multiple sources, identifying missing, messy or anomalous data, and extracting features in order to prepare data for computer modelling.

In the Artificial Intelligence for Data Analytics (AIDA) research project, we will draw on new advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning to address data wrangling issues; we aim to develop systems that help to automate each stage of the data analytics process.  It is anticipated that the resulting technology will benefit researchers, industry and government, dramatically improve the productivity of working data scientists, and revolutionise the speed and efficiency with which data can be transformed into useful knowledge.

The AIDA team will consist of the investigators (Chris Willams, James Geddes, Zoubin Ghahramani, Ian Horrocks, Charles Sutton), the three research assistants, software engineers, data scientists, and aligned PhD students.

We invite applications from talented and qualified researchers to become part of the AIDA research project.

THE ROLES

The AIDA project will build an intelligent data analytics system that guides an analyst through a semi-automated process of acquiring, preparing, integrating, transforming, cleaning, and understanding data for analysis. AIDA will aid data preparation by combining technologies from logical artificial intelligence and statistical machine learning. Logic-based AI contributes by providing a powerful set of tools for integrating and representing metadata about data whose complexity and heterogeneity makes it impossible to represent as a set of relational tables. Statistical machine learning provides a powerful set of techniques for inferring what is “typical” for a data source, which can underlie new techniques for identifying low-quality data, for evaluating the effect of data transformations, and for summarizing data by reporting on typical behaviour.

The three Research Associates (RAs) will take on different aspects of the work programme as described below. They will work as part of the AIDA team, and collaborate with the software engineers in order to create a unified system. These roles are initially on a three year fixed term contract.

RA1 will work on Data Acquisition and Transformation. The goal will be to develop a data acquisition component (DAC) that uses semantic technology to support analytics tools in the acquisition and transformation of relevant data from large, distributed, dynamic, and heterogeneous data sources. The DAC will provide comprehensive data restructuring functionality, which will require the extension of semantic technologies with features such as aggregation. We will also investigate the use data analysis techniques to reveal hidden/lost data structure, and the use of axiomatic data structure to support data understanding, cleaning and analysis.

RA2 will work on Data Understanding. The main tasks here will be around helping the data analyst to build their intuition about what is in the data, looking both for common patterns and anomalies.  This will include work using techniques from statistical machine learning (or related areas) to infer compact summaries of datasets, automatically inferring the types of variables from data, and producing simple reports describing statistically reliable patterns in data.

RA3 will work on Data Quality and Cleaning. Here we identify important tasks on handling missing data, entity disambiguation, and identifying anomalies, and passing on possible uncertainty in these components to later stages of the analysis. We will explore ways of developing new data quality methods, exploiting particularly the methods of statistical machine learning, possibly in combination with semantic technologies.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

The RAs will work with the AIDA team (including the investigators, software engineers, data scientists and PhD students) to advance the aims of the AIDA project.

The main responsibilities of the posts are:

• To conduct research on topics in artificial intelligence for data analytics;
• To collaborate in the preparation of reports, publications and presentations;
• To collaborate and/or present findings at academic and practitioner conferences and meetings.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Essential:

• A PhD or equivalent qualification in a relevant discipline (at the point of taking up the position);
• A proven publication record in a relevant discipline (e.g. in peer-reviewed academic journals and other high-quality publication venues);
• Appropriate software skills for the implementation of research software;
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, for interaction with the AIDA research team and project partners, and the ability to present complex technical information.

Desirable:

• Experience in working in semantic technologies and/or statistical machine learning, or related fields.

THE ALAN TURING INSTITUTE

The Alan Turing Institute (the Turing) is the national centre for data science, established in 2015 with the mission to make great leaps in transformational data science research that will have positive real-world impacts.

The Institute has cross-disciplinarity at its core; we bring researchers in mathematics and theoretical computer science, statistics and machine learning, algorithm for data analytics and distributed computing, computational social science and data ethics, and industry partners, to work together in an open and collaborative environment with a shared goal to generate world-class research in data science.

Our researchers are motivated by driving impact, both through theoretical development and application to real-world problems. In our first year we have identified six priority sectors to focus our translational research: Data-Centric Engineering; Defence and Security; Smart Cities; Culture and Media; Financial Services; and Health and Wellbeing.

We have attracted strategic partnerships with a broad range of users of data science including the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, Intel, GCHQ and HSBC. We are looking to develop partnerships with government departments and have recently announced a collaboration with the Office of National Statistics.

We invite you to join us as we grow our research community, supporting our goal to develop the next generation of data science leaders, shape the public conversation, and push the boundaries of this new science for the public good.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

This is an exciting opportunity to join a diverse, growing organisation with a strong team of individuals at the helm. There is a generous benefits package including Health Care, enrolment into a generous pension scheme, Cycle2work and childcare vouchers. The Institute also offers 30 days’ holiday per year exclusive of bank holidays.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your CV, with contact details for your referees and a covering letter tojobs@turing.ac.uk. If you have questions or would like to discuss the role further with a member of the Institute’s HR Team, please contact them on 0203 862 3322 or emailHR@turing.ac.uk.

CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: 16th JUNE 2017

INTERVIEWS WILL TAKE PLACE W/C 10th JULY 2017

Note if you do not hear back from us by the 5th July 2017, please assume your application has not been successful.

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 status, pregnancy, religion or belief or sexual orientation. Reasonable adjustments to the interview process can also be made for any candidates with a disability.

The appointment of overseas applicants that require Certificates of Sponsorship to work in the United Kingdom will be subject to the Home Office granting the Alan Turing Institute a Tier 2 visa sponsor licence, the application for which is currently in progress.

Please note all offers of employment are subject to continuous eligibility 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 HR@turing.ac.uk.