Role Description Form

______

Role Description

School/Service: Arts, Design and Social Sciences

Role Title: Senior Research Assistant

Grade: 5

Category: Research

Job Purpose: To work on a research Contract between Northumbria University Services Limited and DOWELL TECHNOLOGY LIMITIED COMPANY AT CHENGDU and conduct the contracted research on Modular Design Techniques for High Speed Train design and development, especially on train bogie design.

Responsible to: Professor Shengfeng Qin, the Project Lead

1. Key Responsibilities:

To work on a contracted research project

To communicate with the research partner- DOWELL TECHNOLOGY LIMITIED COMPANY AT CHENGDU on research progression and supports needed

To write up research progress reports and initialise research meetings with the line managers and the company

To write up international conference and journal papers for disseminating the research results

To participate necessary research training programmes such as Fire Safety, Data Protection, Equality and Diversity.

To manage the day-to-day research activities against the research plan

To coordinate the research meeting/communications between the University and the Contractor company

To prepare the final project report in both Chinese and English and participate the final project audit meeting

2. Location: The post will be based on City Campus, CCE 2 Design building, but occasionally, traveling to China is needed for participate research meetings and conduct some field studies.

3. Attendance Requirements: The post is full time, but is available on flexible working arrangements, including part time working or job share.

4. Additional Information ______

Person Specification

E/D A/I 1. Specific Knowledge Product Design theories and processes E A/I

Engineering Product design theories and processes E A/I 2. Skills and Abilities Product family design methods and techniques E A/I

Product conceptual Design methods/tools E A/I E A/I Digital design, simulation, and presentation skills for complex product design

High Level software programming Skill with languages such as C++ E A/I

Professional use of commercial CAD packages such as Solid Works D A/I

Professional use of dynamics simulation software such as Adams/Rail or SIMPACK for Rail E A/I

3. Experience Research on High Speed Train design with journal paper outputs E A/I Working on joint research projects between multiple research institutes and industrial partners E A/I 4. Education/Training First degree in Mechanical Engineering E A PhD in Mechanical Engineering, or design related area E A Project management training D A/I 5. Other Requirements Traveling between the university and China every 6 months E Speak and write Chinese at a basic level D I

Legend: E= Essential D = Desirable

A= Application Form I = Interview T = Test