Bill Browne sends in this interesting job possibility. Closing date for applications is 30 Oct 2009, so if you’re interested, let him know right away!

Research Assistant in Statistical Computing
Clinical Veterinary Science / Centre for Multilevel Modelling
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As part of the ESRC National Centre for E-Social Science (NCESS) programme,
a quantitative node entitled e-Stat has been awarded to a team primarily
based at the Universities of Bristol and Southampton lead at Bristol by
Professor William Browne and Professor Jon Rasbash.

The overarching aim of the project is to realise the ESRC vision of
e-science enabling cutting edge methodological developments to help
quantitative researchers do new and better research, and to provide
learning pathways to bring these cutting edge developments into the working
practices of quantitative social sciences.

To this end the grant has the following objectives:
– to build a stronger network between the NCESS and NCRM programmes;
– to produce tools that enhance productivity across the entire research
process;
– to use these tools to progress five important quantitative social
sciences applications (social segregation, changing circumstances through
childhood, social networks models, handling missing data, sample size
calculations);
– to not re-invent the wheel but re-use what is good;
– to produce tools, services and materials that cater for a diversity of
users and empower these users;
– to produce tools that support collaborative research across different
software packages;
– to produce tools for documenting the research process in a form suitable
for sharing;
– to produce tools for sharing results and techniques across the broad
social science community;
– to use these tools to showcase and disseminate NCRM methodology
developments and NCeSS E-social science developments.

As part of the project we are looking to appoint a research assistant to
work with Professor Browne. The post-holder will be based at the School of
Clinical Veterinary Sciences, University of Bristol which is situated in
Langford, North Somerset.

The postholder will carry out research with Professor Browne and other
colleagues involved in the project. The post holder will be employed as a
research associate with skills in statistical computing as part of a large
team of researchers based in several universities. The project will produce
a series of tools which will enhance the entire research process. These
will include a new piece of software for fitting statistical models
primarily by Monte Carlo Markov chain methods. This software will generate
code to fit specific models given user input and the post holder will have
some involvement in the development and testing of the software. In
particular the post holder will use their statistical expertise to work
alongside software engineers and give input on statistical algorithms and
test the correctness of the code generation. They will in addition be
involved in producing accompanying documentation for the software. They
will also be involved in work on inter-operability between software
packages. Here the idea is to produce tools that allow statistical
modelling packages to exchange statistical models.

The postholder should hold a higher degree in statistics or a related
discipline, and have experience of statistical model development and
familiarity with MCMC methods, random effect modelling and either the C/C++
or Python programming languages. Familiarity with the MLwiN and/or WinBUGS
statistical software packages will be desirable as will an interest in
working in an inter-disciplinary environment. As the project involves
working alongside software engineers and producing a package and
documentation for non-statisticians, excellent verbal, written and
interpersonal communication skills are also required.

This post is available from 1st December 2009 and will be offered for a
period of 30 months.

Grade: Level a in Pathway 2
Salary: £29,704 – £33,432

Contacts for informal enquiries:
Prof WJ Browne [email protected]
Prof J Rasbash [email protected]

Timescale of appointment:
Contract: Fixed Term
Contract: 30 months
Anticipated start date: 01 December 2009

Closing date for applications: 5 pm on 30th October 2009