Civil & Enviromental Engineering

Location:  Guildford
Salary:  £35,308 to £43,155 per annum
Fixed Term
Post Type:  Full Time
Closing Date:  23.59 hours BST on Wednesday 21 June 2023
Reference:  028423

This project “AI for Net Zero” aims to rapidly transform the anaerobic digestion (AD) industry into a data-driven, digitalised sector, to accelerate and enhance its contributions to a Net-Zero UK. Due to the complexities of predicting how different waste feedstocks and different microbial communities will interact under varying operating conditions, current AD production systems use conservative approaches to avoid process upset, which limits the full potential of AD. This project has a multi-disciplinary team from across the UK to develop novel AI approaches, combined with process systems engineering, systems biology, and life-cycle assessment to develop whole-systems decision-making tools informed by detailed sub-system modelling.

The AD microbiome team will  investigate AD microbiome dynamic responses to feedstock variation, operational conditions and biogas production at industrial- and lab-scale AD bioreactors, and reveal underlying metabolic pathways and key features. Molecular biological methods (qPCR, RT-qPCR, amplicon sequencing, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics) will be used to characterise microbial community composition and functional pathways and data will be used to build AD microbiome models. 

This is a fixed term contract, one year with possibility to renew.

The PDRA will:

• Coordinate sample collection from University labs and Industrial collaborator’s sites.
• Analyse collected samples, DNA/RNA extraction and sequencing.
• Bioinformatics data analysis
• Microbiome modelling
• Support project team and other group members
• Supervise PhD students on bioinformatics

Please contact Dr Bing Guo for any enquiries related to this job post (b.guo@surrey.ac.uk).

Further details: Job Description

Please note, it is University Policy to offer a starting salary equivalent to Level 3.6 (£34,314) to successful applicants who have been awarded, but are yet to receive, their PhD certificate. Once the original PhD certificate has been submitted to the local HR Department, the salary will be increased to Level 4.1 (£35,308).