Benchmark Role Profile for Research Fellow
Version 2.0
Last amended: March 2013
THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM
Role Profile Form
Job Title:
Research Associate Bioinformatics/Image Analysis – Two Posts
School/Department:
School of Computer Science
Salary:
£28,695 - £37,394 per annum, depending on skills and experience.
Salary progression beyond this scale is subject to performance.
Job Family and Level:
Research and Teaching Level 4 (Appointment will be Level 4 Career
training grade where an appointment is made before PhD has been
completed)
Contract Status:
Fixed-term ends 30 June 2016
Hours of Work:
Full Time, 36.25h per week
Location:
Jubilee Campus
Reporting to:
Professor Tony Pridmore
Purpose of the Role:
The iPlant Collaborative is a major initiative aimed at creating a software platform that enables a large
community of plant biologists to make use of advanced computational tools for research purposes. The
University’s School of Computer Science and Centre for Plant Integrative Biology have developed a set of
image analysis methods and software tools that have proven effective in extracting quantitative
descriptions of plant organs from confocal laser microscope, colour and X-ray Computed Tomography
images The purpose of this post is to integrate these tools into the iPlant environment to substantially
widened user base and a step-change in the impact that bioimage analysis research and tool
development at Nottingham has on plant science both nationally and internationally.
Main Responsibilities
1.
4.
Provide image analysis expertise and implementation skills to maximise the potential of existing
bioimage analysis tools, making them both valuable to and easily usable by a large set of users
via iPlant.
Re-implement existing code in C or C++ to make best use of the iPlant framework and increase
computational efficiency.
Interact with iPlant staff to define interfaces between their software framework and Nottingham’s
contributions.
Support the parallelisation of tools inside the iPlant framework as required.
5.
Perform rigorous tests and evaluations of computational tools.
6.
7.
Contribute to user interfaces and software documentation.
Maintain close contacts with colleagues and with relevant managers, sharing expertise and
information to ensure that developments are co-ordinated, and that a coherent development and
service environment is maintained.
Organise and contribute to internal and external workshops on the use of the iPlant tools for
researchers and graduate students
Write up research work for publication and/or contribute to the dissemination at
national/international conferences, resulting in successful research outputs.
2.
3.
8.
9.
Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications & Experience
Essential
Qualifications/
Education
PhD in Computer Science, Bioinformatics,
or a related area
Skills/Training
Ability to develop software in C/C++
Ability to develop software in at least one
of Perl, MATLAB, and Python
Basic knowledge of image processing and
analysis
Desirable
Experience of image processing,
analysis and/or computer vision
research
Experience of parallel computing
and/or interface design
Ability to work independently and as part
of an interdisciplinary team
Effective communication (oral and
written) skills
Experience
Some practical experience of applying the
specialist skills, approaches and
techniques required for the role.
Statutory/Legal
Decision Making
i) Taken independently by the role holder;
 Software design/structure
 Design of any interfaces and parallelisation strategies required
ii) Taken in collaboration with others;
 Choice of software tools and methods used
 Addition of new and extension of existing bioimage analysis methods and tools
iii) Referred to the appropriate line manager by the role holder

Wider strategy of our research and development work

Purchasing decisions
Additional Information
The Centre for Plant Integrative Biology (www.cpib.ac.uk) is an interdisciplinary unit bringing
together biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers to address fundamental
problems in plant and crop science. The School of Computer Science, and particularly the
Computer Vision Laboratory, has been closely involved since CPIB’s inception, addressing a
range of image analysis and computer vision problems associated with the recovery of
quantitative two and three-dimensional data from various microscope, colour and X-ray
computed tomography images of plants. This work has resulted in the production of a range of
computational methods and associated software tools, which have been made available to and
well-received by the plant and crop science communities. These tools and methods underpin a
range of research projects and are central to the operation of the University’s recently opened
Hounsfield Facility, a unique resource built around a set of X-ray micro-Computed Tomography
scanners and associated automation.
These posts provide opportunities to develop our bioimage analysis capability further,
significantly increasing its power and uptake by integrating it into the US-developed iPlant
environment. The iPlant Collaborative is a major initiative aimed at creating a software
platform that enables a wide community of plant biologists to make use of advanced
computational tools in order to generate and analyse large data sets. The role holders will join
an established and highly regarded interdisciplinary team to help build the first iPlant node
outside the US, populating it with appropriately implemented and modified versions of
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Nottingham’s bioimage analysis tools.
Depending on the tool this may involve adapting the core methods used, re-coding in a faster
language (C or C++), parallelising computations using iPlant’s framework, adapting the tool to
iPlant interfaces, as well as testing and following up on user feedback. The outcome of this
project will be a substantially widened user base and a step-change in the impact that
bioimage analysis research and tool development at Nottingham has on plant science both
nationally and internationally.
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