Kew Research Fellow - Digital Revolution

We are seeking applications from promising early-career scientists with interesting, innovative, and viable research ideas for the Future Leader Fellowship.

The Future Leader Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for early-career researchers to develop their scientific portfolio and skills in a vibrant research environment, working with colleagues in Kew Science to make substantial contributions to challenges facing humanity.

Kew offers five Future Leader Fellowships each year, aligned to our five Research Priorities. This Fellowship is within the Digital Revolution Priority. The successful candidate will be based at Kew.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) is a leading plant science institute, UNESCO World Heritage Site, and major visitor attraction. Our mission is to understand and protect plants and fungi for the well-being of people and the future of all life on Earth.

We are working to end the unprecedented extinction crisis and to help create a world where nature is protected, valued by all and managed sustainably. We will achieve these goals by drawing on our leading scientific research, unrivalled collections of plants and fungi, global network of partners, inspirational gardens at Kew and Wakehurst, and our 260 years of history.

Join us on our journey as protectors of the world’s plants and fungi.

Our flagship Future Leader Fellowship programme enables the brightest and most innovative young scientists to develop research projects in their field of expertise while gaining the necessary leadership and professional skills for the next stage of their careers.

Line managed by a senior researcher, the candidate will be benefit from opportunities for development that include – but are not limited to - training workshops on topics from grant writing to research impact, a mentorship programme, bi-annual meetings with the Director of Science, and other chances for researcher-led training. They will also be able to apply for secondment and research funding internally and are encouraged to use this funding to travel for their research.

RBG Kew holds a wealth of data about plants and fungi: their traits, uses, distribution, and morphology, and their presence in our collections. Mining these data offers exciting opportunities to address multiple and diverse research questions across science and the humanities. However, significant technological challenges remain in integrating datasets created by different sources at different times for different purposes; in the extraction and inference of information from them; and in delivering the right information to human researchers and automated systems with the potential to exploit it.

Within Kew’s Science Strategy, the “Digital Revolution” has been identified as a priority, putting the management and use of our digital assets at the heart of our scientific agenda.

We seek applications from candidates in any discipline that are data literate and wish to harness Kew’s data to address real world challenges, such as the protection of the environment and the promotion and human health and welfare. We also welcome proposals which will explore novel approaches to disambiguate digital texts and images, integrate data of diverse provenance, or detect hidden patterns in reference data to support classification, predictive modelling, and hypothesis generation.

Our fantastic benefits package includes opportunities for continuous learning, a generous annual leave entitlement, flexible working to help you maintain a healthy work-life balance, an Employee Assistance Programme and other wellbeing support such as cycle to work scheme and discounted gym membership. We also offer a competitive pension, an employee discount scheme and free entry into a wide range of national museums and galleries, as well access to our own beautiful gardens at Kew and Wakehurst.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from all sections of the community. We guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the post.

No agencies please.

Closing Date 30/05/2022

Applicants must include a CV and a research plan as attachments on their online application form. The research plan does not have a set format but should not exceed three sides of A4. The research plan should provide an outline of what your plans would be for the four-year Fellowship, which will then be developed into a full research plan in collaboration with your line manager if successful.