Postdoctoral Fellow

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Position Number: 62705 Faculty / Division: Faculty of Engineering

Position Title: Postdoctoral Fellow School / Unit: School of Electrical Engineering and
Date Written: June 2018 Telecommunications
Position Level: Level A

UNSW is currently implementing a ten year strategy to 2025 and our ambition for the next decade is nothing
less than to establish UNSW as Australia’s global university. We aspire to this in the belief that a great
university, which is a global leader in discovery, innovation, impact, education and thought leadership, can
make an enormous difference to the lives of people in Australia and around the world.
Following extensive consultation in 2015, we identified three strategic priority areas. Firstly, a drive for
academic excellence in research and education. Universities are often classified as ‘research intensive’ or
‘teaching intensive’. UNSW is proud to be an exemplar of both. We are amongst a limited group of
universities worldwide capable of delivering research excellence alongside the highest quality education on
a large scale. Secondly, a passion for social engagement, which improves lives through advancing equality,
diversity, open debate and economic progress. Thirdly, a commitment to achieving global impact through
sharing our capability in research and education in the highest quality partnerships with institutions in both
developed and emerging societies. We regard the interplay of academic excellence, social engagement and
global impact as the hallmarks of a great forward-looking 21st century university.
To achieve this ambition we are attracting the very best academic and professional staff to play leadership
roles in our organisation.

UNSW recognises the role of employees in driving a high performance culture. The behavioural
expectations for UNSW are below.
Please refer to the UNSW Behavioural Indicators for the expectations of your career level (level A).

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The School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications has a vibrant research culture reflected in the
achievements of its academic staff, and is currently rated as a level 5 ERA School (“Well above world
standard”) in each of the 2010, 2012 and 2015 Excellence in Research Australia evaluations. The School
enjoys a world-leading reputation for research excellence, with six IEEE Fellows among our 44 academic
staff. According to the Shanghai Jiaotong 2016 rankings, EE&T@UNSW is placed first in Australia. The
School has innovated significantly by introducing the first 5-year integrated bachelors/masters (with minor)
and first (non-conversion) 2-year accredited masters programs, each with a major component of engineering
design. These innovations have positioned the School in a period of very strong growth. Nationally, the
School offers the most complete range of undergraduate and postgraduate electrical engineering and
telecommunications programs, and is the largest of its kind. The School building is currently undergoing a
$104m refurbishment, which when complete, will place our facilities amongst the best in the world. With a
team that is recognised for its teaching excellence and innovative research, the School is producing the next
generation of innovative engineers who will be equipped with the skills and knowledge to make a positive
impact on industry and society. http://www.engineering.unsw.edu.au/electrical-engineering/
The Postdoctoral Fellow is funded by an ARC Discovery Grant held by Prof. Victor Solo and entitled: Vector
Network System Identification. By ‘vector’ it is meant that each node carries a vector of signal; system
identification might also be called ‘statistical interference’. The three aims of the grant will, estimate network
structure from nodal data, analyse network functions by fitting conditional independence graphical models,
and compare networks using tools from topological data analysis.
The Postdoctoral Fellow will undertake research as specified in the ARC proposal; namely develop and
program algorithms and carry out computational studies in system identification for networks carrying vector
signals at each node.
The role of Postdoctoral Fellow reports to Professor V. Solo and has no direct reports.

Specific responsibilities for this role include

• Conduct research in the area of vector network system identification independently and as part of a
team;
• Contribute to the writing of scientific papers and reports for international journals and progress
reporting to other researchers and industry partners;

• Participate in and/or present at conferences and/or workshops relevant to the project as required;
• Assist with the coordination of research activities and actively contribute to research outputs to meet
project milestones;

• Contribute to the preparation of research proposal submissions to funding bodies and actively seek
collaboration with industry partners, as appropriate;
• Assist with the supervision of research students in the research area, where required;
• Cooperate with all health and safety policies and procedures of the university and take all reasonable
care to ensure that your actions or omissions do not impact on the health and safety of yourself or
others.

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• PhD (or thesis submitted and PhD soon to be awarded) in Electrical Engineering, or related discipline,
especially in Physics, Applied Mathematics, Statistics or Computer Science (Machine Learning);

• Specialisation in system identification or statistical signal processing, computer vision, computational


physics or machine learning;

• Demonstrated ability to conduct independent research with limited supervision;


• Demonstrated track record of publications in refereed journals and refereed conferences relative to
opportunity;
• Demonstrated ability to communicate and interact with a diverse range of stakeholders and students;

• Knowledge of:
o C programming,
o Linux,
o Sparsity Methods for Regularisation; Ill-conditioned Inverse Problems; Time Series
Analysis; Conditional Independence Graphical Modelling; Asymptotic Methods of Statistics;
Optimisation;

• Knowledge of health and safety responsibilities and commitment to attending relevant health and
safety training.

It is not the intention of the position description to limit the scope or accountabilities of the position
but to highlight the most important aspects of the position. The aspects mentioned above may be
altered in accordance with the changing requirements of the role.

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