Applications are invited for a Research Fellow to work with Dr Tristan Henderson in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews on a new project funded by the Wellcome Trust entitled “Towards contextual consent in social media health research”.

The project aims to investigate whether it is possible to predict social media users' willingness to share their data for health research. Social media are increasingly used for health research, but growing unease about the use of such data for other purposes means that researchers must address many ethical challenges when considering their use. The project will build on our existing work in using contextual integrity for obtaining consent for online social network research (ICWSM 2015 paper), machine learning for predicting privacy preferences (Mobiquitous 2015 and IUI 2016 papers), and ethical online social network research (SIGCOMM Ethics Workshop 2015 and SIGMETRICS PER 2013 papers). For all papers see Dr Henderson's publication list at http://tnhh.org/research/pubs/

The successful candidate will have (or be about to obtain) a PhD in Computer Science or a related subject. A strong background in some or all of programming in Python, collecting data from online social networks, and machine learning is required. The appointee will be expected to present their work both internally and externally, organise external workshops with stakeholders, and to help with supervision and training of postgraduate and undergraduate research students.

The position is available for one year in the first instance. The funding, however, is through a Wellcome Trust Seed Award (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Humanities-and-social-science/Funding-schemes/Seed-Awards/index.htm), one of the goals of which is to produce results that can lead to follow-up projects. Interest in developing a research career and helping to develop such follow-up research proposals is thus highly desirable.

For informal enquiries, please contact: Dr Tristan Henderson, School of Computer Science, tnhh@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Applications are particularly welcome from women, who are under-represented in Science posts at the University.  You can find out more about Equality & Diversity at https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/edi/.

The University of St Andrews is committed to promoting equality of opportunity for all, which is further demonstrated through its working on the Gender and Race Equality Charters and being awarded the Athena SWAN award for women in science, HR Excellence in Research Award and the LGBT Charter;  http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/edi/diversityawards/. 

Please quote ref:  AR1796SB
 
Closing Date:  30 June 2016
 
Further Particulars:  AR1796SB FPs.pdf

School of Computer Science
Salary: £31,656 per annum
Start: 1 September 2016 or as soon as possible thereafter
Fixed term for 12 months