Jobwatch: seeking a £70k deputy

From a well-rewarded chair in e-science to a teacher trainer based in the Lakes, Pat Leon reviews what's on the science job market menu, and also finds culinary perks on offer for Oxford research fellows.

Salaries for advertised posts often vary according to the calibre and experience of the candidate but the £29,000 or so difference between the lowest and highest amount offered to the person who secures Edinburgh University's second chair in e-science is a job in itself. The salary range of £42,177 to £70,852 reflects the possibility that an e-chair is as likely to attract someone at the beginning of their career as an established leader in the field.

The successful applicant will deputy-direct the National e-Science Centre, a consortium involving Glasgow University, as well as leading multidisciplinary research projects in innovative information technology or science applications of IT.

Michael Forman, head of the School of Informatics, in which the post will be based, says the job is open to applicants from various science and technology disciplines. "We expect someone who is primarily an expert in informatics with application to science but we are open to a scientist who has worked with technology in the pursuit of their science. If it's the latter, the chair might be located in a different school."

No money is attached to the two junior research fellowships in sciences that Worcester College, Oxford, is advertising this week. Those elected will, however, be able to wine and dine in the college and apply for research allowances for books and travelling. The fellowships, for under 30s, are a bridge between postgraduate study and an academic post.

A salary of £45,000 to work on St Martin's College's Ambleside or Lancaster campuses ought to prove tempting. But the college is having to readvertise the position of head of its science education division after its first shortlist disintegrated when people were offered other jobs.

Now St Martin's is casting its net beyond university education departments in the hope of a bigger catch. Philip Gager, associate dean of the education faculty, says the division is one of the largest providers of school science teachers in the country. He says: "There are two categories of potential applicants - people who have been school science teachers and moved into a university school of education and are looking for a leadership role, and people who moved from schools into further and higher education science departments. Science eduction is a big division. There are 16 or 17 staff split between three campuses - Ambleside, Carlisle and Lancaster. Part of the job will be linking with Manchester Metropolitan University to manage our science learning centre."

Kent University seeks a school head of physical sciences to take over from present incumbent Richard Jones. Jones' alma mater is Wellington's Victoria University in New Zealand, which is also advertising a head of its school of chemical and physical sciences. The school recently established the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, named after 2000 Nobel prizewinner, Alan MacDiarmid.