Research Associate (fixed-term post) (CC6576)

Working with a team of Computer Scientists at the Centre for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research and Applications (CAMERA), you will research new methods for creating highly realistic facial stimuli – including new faces, expressions and animations – in a highly intuitive manner accessible by non-experts.

You will be part of a wider EPSRC funded project with Psychologists at Queen Mary University (QMU) and University College London (UCL) – collaborating with them at multiple points of the project. Using the research outcomes and prototype tools developed, the wider cross-University team at QMU and UCL will research why individuals show differences in emotional recognition, and how these individual differences contribute to psychiatric risk indicators.

The role is based in CAMERA, a leading UK research impact centre based at the University of Bath which contributes to research across multiple disciplines: creative industries, sport and rehabilitation. You will have the opportunity to apply your work outside the project to other research in the centre, including commercial projects with the creative industries. CAMERA has a strong track record of commercial work, recently delivering projects with e.g. Aardman (11:11 Memories Untold) and REWIND (Madame Butterfly).

You will research and develop a next generation platform for video-realistic facial identity and static/dynamic expression generation – combining modern AI, Visual Computing and Visual Effects techniques, working closely with our CAMERA studio team. As well as having advanced animation features, a key aim of the project is that the platform developed is accessible to non-experts, allowing for rapid generation of high-quality faces and animations by our partners at QMU and UCL.  

We expect contributions to be made by the Bath team in the academic areas of Machine Learning, Computer Graphics and/or Computer Vision. Being a multi-disciplinary project, our work will also contribute to experiments resulting in joint academic papers in Psychology led by QMU and UCL which the candidate will be expected to collaborate on in terms of providing technical efforts as specific milestones of the project. 

To carry out the required research at Bath, you should have a PhD in a relevant area (e.g. Computer Vision, Graphics, Machine Learning, Mathematics), strong programming skills (e.g. C++, Python and/or Matlab) and a track record of high-quality academic publications. You should have a strong ambition to publish academic research at the highest level in Computer Vision, Graphics and/or Machine Learning (e.g. CVPR, ICCV, NeuroIPS, ICML, ECCV, SIGGRAPH, Eurographics). 

This is a full-time role, for a fixed-term of up to 36 months.

For general enquiries about the role please contact Prof. Darren Cosker (D.P.Cosker@bath.ac.uk), however, please ensure that all applications are submitted via the University website.

Closing Date: 07 Apr 2019
Type: Education & Research