Two Postdoctoral Positions in 1) Computational Mechanics and 2) Instrumentation at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, UK)

Two Postdoctoral Positions, 3-year full-time contract for each post, in 1) Computational Mechanics and 2) Instrumentation at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, United Kingdom)

A multidisciplinary partnership, comprising of two UK universities (Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh), NHS Lothian, Large Animal Research and Imaging Facility (LARIF) and two industrial partners (CMR Surgical and Intellipalp Dx), was recently awarded a major research grant by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to undertake a three-year research project entitled ''Mechanically-intelligent'' Intra-operative Tissue Assessment for Robot-Assisted Surgery (MIRAS). The vision of this engineering-clinical-industrial partnership is for a novel and transformative approach to minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery (RAS), for the intra-operative assessment of tissue characteristics of colorectal cancers to drastically improve its surgical outcome and patient prognosis. This research project offers exciting opportunities for a total of 3 postdoctoral research and clinical fellowship positions to work together with the investigator team and partners across multidisciplinary subject areas, including Clinical assessment of patients during surgery, robot-assisted surgery, experimentation and modelling of structure-property relation in soft tissue cancers, and the design, fabrication and testing of active miniaturised tactile sensors.

This advertisement is for two engineering Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) posts at Heriot-Watt University, in addition to one Clinical Research Fellow (CRF) post at the University of Edinburgh/Western General Hospital also being advertised. Working with engineers, clinicians and industrial partners:

The post-holder A (in Computational Mechanics) will develop the computational modelling framework for intra-operative identification and assessment of tumours and surgical margin, based on the mechanical data acquired by the device mounted on the surgical robot. They will be expected to communicate regularly within the multidisciplinary partnership team, involving complementary research areas of medical devices, laser-based manufacturing, fibre-optic sensing, animal surgical models and robot-assisted surgery. They will attend and present research findings at internal project meetings and national/international conferences, and also contribute to the internal and external visibility of the research groups and publish scientific results arising from this project. The focus of this PDRA post will be to develop, test and validate the computational modelling framework to process, intra-operatively, the mechanical measurement data from the device into quantitative assessment of tumour identification and surgical margin, taking into account the co-working with the surgical robot and the constraints given rise by the clinical and surgical procedures. Main work and research methods will involve surface/volume model reconstruction, finite-element material modelling of soft tissue, numerical optimisation, uncertainty quantification and computational methods for inverse analysis.

The post-holder B (in Instrumentation) will be responsible for design and fabrication of a sensor probe that is compatible for Robot-Assisted surgery.  This probe will assess the mechanical properties of the tissue under test. It is envisaged that this will involve sub-mm scale design and fabrication which could include laser assisted manufacture and additive manufacturing techniques.  Optical sensing is proposed to achieve the required resolution while maintaining a miniaturised sensor structure. They will also work closely with other members of the team responsible for clinical assessment and computational modelling. They will attend and present research findings at internal project meetings and national/international conferences, and also contribute to the internal and external visibility of the research groups and publish scientific results arising from this project. The focus of this PDRA post will be to design, manufacture and test the sensor probe and associated instrumentation.  The sensor probe aims to be compatible with Robot-Assisted surgery, and therefore the sensor must be on the scale of a few millimeters.  The design stage will explore how to incorporate the mechanical actuator elements along with the sensor architecture, and suitable manufacturing approaches need to be devised.  This could include aspects of laser machining and/or additive manufacture.  Optical fibre interferometry is proposed for the sensing mechanism, and the PDRA will devise means for including the fibre into the probe, and develop the interrogation hardware based upon existing expertise in the research group.

More details about these two postdoc positions can be found here: Post 1 or Post 1 (Jobs.ac.uk)  and  Post 2 or Post 2 (Jobs.ac.uk).

Informal enquiries should be addressed to Dr. Yuhang Chen (y.chen AT hw.ac.uk, Associate Professor of Computational Bioengineering, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. 

Closing Date: 25th July