Salary: Grade 7 (£36,023 - £45,585)

Contract: Full-time (35 hours per week), Fixed Term for 31 months

The post is a fixed-term contract for between 31 months starting June 2024.

The Project

Mental health represents, globally, a priority for public health organizations, policy makers, patients and citizens. The mental illnesses’ diagnosis and decision processes are still uncertain and inconsistent especially in a fast-evolving real world where stressors affect people in different ways. This understanding is key to developing mental health services and outstanding policies that are more responsive to the cultural and social contexts and inclusive towards vulnerable people. SMILE aims to improve the quality of self-assessment, learning, and clinical practices and ensure affordable services by sharing evidence-based knowledge, providing scalable digital tools, and ensuring personalized decision-making and interventions in an effective way.

The Team

The key Schools involved in this project are the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences through its Institute of Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering (IMPEE) and the School of Social Sciences (SOSS).

The Heriot-Watt team is led by Dr Theodore Lim (IMPEE) as the Principal Investigator on the project and Dr Mel McKendrick (SOSS), Project Lead for The School of Social Sciences with the wider Centre for Applied Behavioural Sciences.

Key Duties & Responsibilities:

We are seeking to appoint 1 full-time researcher to undertake the following key tasks (and/or additional tasks will be defined as the project develops):

• Work with the wider European team to help to implement the ethics protocols and apply for local ethics approval
• Be involved in the design of gamified digital tools
• Help to conduct the UK pilot studies
• Analyse data and write reports and publications
• Assist with disseminating results of the UK pilots

Education, qualifications and experience:

Essential criteria

• Demonstrable knowledge, experience, and skills (but not limited) to the following in Psychology:
• Mental health models, experiments, assessment, interventions, and statistical methods
• ICT-delivered psychological services
• Gamification and Digital mental health
• Ability to conduct scientific research in social and technical systems as well as review and manage references
• Confidence using technology (e.g., Excel, SPSS, R, Adobe Premier, VR, Unity)
• Ability to appraise social-technological influences and impact on well-being, ecological validity study and derive methods, techniques and processes that can be pragmatically implemented and deployed
• Experience in conducting different data analysis methods (e.g., ANOVA, regression, hierarchical modelling, qualitative)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills - ability to document, report, and present at scientific and technical meetings in the consortium and at international level
• Ability to manage own time, work to deadlines, work in groups and independently (even under remote supervision), and additionally support and later lead certain aspects of the research Desirable criteria

Desirable criteria

• Experience in advanced research methods in the field of healthcare and well-being
• Knowledge or experience in experimental ethics, recruitment, participatory-action management
• Awareness and understanding on mental and wellbeing biomarkers or signatures
• Knowledge or experience in healthcare ethics, clinical trial documentation and data management
• A degree or equivalent certified professional qualification. Candidates who are near to completion of their PhD will also be considered

About Heriot-Watt University

Heriot-Watt University has five campuses: three in the UK (Edinburgh, Scottish Borders and Orkney), one in Dubai and one in Malaysia. The University offers a highly distinctive range of degree programmes in the specialist areas of science, engineering, design, business and languages.

With a history dating back to 1821, Heriot-Watt University has established a reputation for world-class teaching and practical, leading-edge research, which has made it one of the top UK universities for business and industry. We connect with industry at every level and develop programmes to match their needs - so employers get work-ready industry-fit graduates.

How to Apply

Applications can be submitted until midnight on the 2nd of June 2024. Interviews will take place in the June 2024.

Applications, including a covering letter, CV and the names of three referees, should be submitted via the Heriot-Watt Recruitment website.

For further information regarding the position, please contact Dr Mel McKendrick (M.McKendrick@hw.ac.uk) and Dr Theodore Lim (T.Lim@hw.ac.uk).

At Heriot Watt we are passionate about our values and look to them to connect our people globally and to help us collaborate and celebrate our success through working together. Our research programmes can deliver real world impact which is achieved through the diversity of our international community and the recognition of creative talent that connects our global team.

Our flourishing community will give you the freedom to challenge and to bring your enterprising mind and to help our partners with solutions that can be applied now and in the future. Join us and Heriot Watt will provide you with a platform to thrive and work in a way that also helps you live your life in balance with well-being and inclusiveness at the heart of our global community.

Heriot-Watt University is committed to securing equality of opportunity in employment and to the creation of an environment in which individuals are selected, trained, promoted, appraised and otherwise treated on the sole basis of their relevant merits and abilities. Equality and diversity are all about maximising potential and creating a culture of inclusion for all.

Heriot-Watt University values diversity across our University community and welcomes applications from all sectors of society, particularly from underrepresented groups. For more information, please see our website https://www.hw.ac.uk/uk/services/equality-diversity.htm and also our award-winning work in Disability Inclusive Science Careers https://disc.hw.ac.uk/ .

We welcome and will consider flexible working patterns e.g. part-time working and job share options.

Use our total rewards calculator: https://www.hw.ac.uk/about/work/total-rewards-calculator.htm to see the value of benefits provided by Heriot-Watt University.