Research Associate in Computational Social Science

Position

The Alan Turing Institute is looking to hire an outstanding computational social scientist with a strong background in two complementary methodological areas: (1) data science and (2) agent-computing modelling. Experience in both areas is essential for this position as the Public Policy programme works with public-sector partners with a large demand for computational tools that (1) can exploit newly-availably large-scale data, and (2) are able to examine the micro-level causal mechanisms that generate them. The post-holder will join the Public Policy programme and will be a part of a multidisciplinary team focused on developing a new programme of research in policy modelling. We are open to computational social scientists with topical expertise in diverse areas, for example, inequality (of different types), economic development, industrial organisation, institutional design, social policy, international trade, etc.

Duties and Responsibilties

• To develop high calibre data analysis and socioeconomic modelling.
• To identify and curate data sources that can be used to calibrate/estimate and validate the models.
• To design and implement realistic policy intervention experiments, and translate the results into intuitive lessons for policymakers.
• To work with other Research Associates across the Policy Modelling research group and the Public Policy programme.

Requirements

• A PhD or equivalent level of professional experience in any quantitative discipline related to socioeconomic systems, complexity science, or computational social sciences.
• A solid track record conducting innovative quantitative/computational research to study socioeconomic systems and their dynamics. We will consider candidates for an appointment at a Senior Research Associate level if they have significant postdoctoral research experience.
• Experienced in working with large-scale datasets from various sources and formats.

More information can be be found on their website.