Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow in Applied Statistics or Data Science at UCL

About us

About IOE

IOE is UCL Faculty of Education and Society.

Founded in 1902, IOE has been shaping policy and helping government, organisations and individuals navigate a changing society for the last 120 years. We embrace collaboration and excellence to create a future that is inclusive and just, and have been ranked number one for education every year since 2014 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

The Centre for Longitudinal Studies is an ESRC Resource Centre. CLS has responsibility for and manages four of Britain’s internationally renowned cohort studies:

• 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS)
• 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70)
• Millennium Cohort Study (MCS)
• Next Steps (formerly the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England)

The cohort studies follow individuals throughout their lives. They involve multiple surveys, together with other specialised forms of data collection (for example physical measurements and biological samples), and linkages to administrative records. The information collected is broad, covering areas as diverse as education, employment, and income, family and parenting, physical and mental health, and social attitudes. As well as conducting regular surveys of the cohorts, CLS delivers a strong interdisciplinary research programme based on the cohorts, as well as programmes of research on survey methodology and statistical methods.

About the role

The purpose of the job is to work on a new UKRI-funded project led by Dr. Felix C. Tropf which uses big data from social and biological science to explain and predicting social and health inequalities. The research will entail analysing social and biological information from large-scale surveys and population registers to explain inequalities in our wealth, health, and family planning.

The project will also contribute to the methods development in Multi-Level/Hierarchical Modelling and Data Science. Data sources will include, but is not limited to, population registers and various national and international surveys. The successful candidate will take a leading role in the quantitative analyses and methods development, writing of the research papers and of their publication in leading journals, as well as playing a key role in dissemination.

The expected starting date of the successful candidate is 1^st December 2023, or as close to this date as possible, and the post is available until 31^st August 2028 in the first instance.

About you

You will have or be working towards completion, or near completion of a PhD in statistics, data science or a quantitative empirical discipline such as genetic epidemiology, sociology or economics.

You will also have expertise in statistical software such as Stata, R, and/or other relevant statistical software and experience of using advanced quantitative methods to analyse large-scale datasets.

For appointment to Senior Research Fellow at Grade 8 you will have substantial experience working either at post-doctoral level in the research areas noted above (in which case, appropriate academic publications should be demonstrated) and have the ability to define new research challenges and make substantial contributions to research funding proposals.

Your application form should address all the person specification points and should clearly demonstrate how your skills and experience meet each of the criteria.

It is important that the criteria are clearly numbered and that you provide a response to each one.