Salary range : £36,024 (pro rata)
FTE : Initially 0.5 FTE (17.5 hours/week) but anticipated to increase to 1 FTE (35 hours / week) from September 2024
Term : Fixed Term (26/02/2026)
Closing date : 28/07/2024
The Department of Psychological Sciences and Health is looking to recruit a researcher (0.5FTE at Grade 7) to work on the project Agent-based Memory Prosthesis to Encourage Reminiscing (AMPER). It is anticipated that the working hours will increase 1FTE from September 2024.
As a Research Associate under the supervision and guidance of Professor Mario Alfredo Parra, you will play a key role within an interdisciplinary project funded by The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The project focuses on a user-centred design to create an embodied agent with a novel human-like autobiographical memory. You will help perform a carer-assisted intervention for personalised reminiscence (e.g., telling meaningful stories) to bring to the surface memories residing in the still viable regions of the brain. Autobiographical memory provides a reflection of “self”, enabling an individual to relive an event. By building a technological bridge to unique life experiences and aiding recollection, patients’ sense of value, importance, and belonging will be restored.
The successful candidate will contribute to co-production and co-design activities with patients with cognitive impairment caused by dementia and their carers. The successful candidate will also contribute to participant recruitment, screening and assessment. The role will involve testing participants on various cognitive-behavioural assessments and responsibility for scanning participants at the test facility. To these aims, the successful candidate will work collaboratively with computer scientists on a day-to-day basis, helping develop prototypes of AMPER and also piloting them towards a final version. The project will also involve managing everyday activities that relate to the project, inviting participants for testing, database management, dissemination of results at conferences, public engagement, and writing research reports for publication (in collaboration with colleagues from Heriot-Watt University). Other collaborators on the project are Prof Matthew Aylett and Dr Mei Yii Lim (University Heriot-Watt).
To be considered for the role, you will be educated to doctoral level in an appropriate discipline or have significant relevant experience and a relevant degree. You will have sufficient breadth or depth of knowledge in cognitive and neuropsychological assessment. Working with vulnerable groups and having strong writing skills are critical. Skills working within interdisciplinary teams, conducting interventions via healthcare technologies or other methodologies, and running quantitative and qualitative statistical analyses are highly desirable.
Furthermore, a willingness and ability to travel within the central belt of Scotland (e.g., via train) is a prerequisite, as recruitment, testing, and engagement activities will occur in different NHS boards located within the central belt.
Formal interviews for this post will be held on 08/08/2024.
Informal enquiries about the post can be directed to Mario Parra Rodriguez, Professor (mario.parra-rodriguez@strath.ac.uk).