Research Assistant​/Associate in Digital Twin Development

Research Assistant/Associate – Digital Twin Development

Requisition

Location:

Newcastle, GB

Contract Type:
Fixed Term

Working Pattern:
Full Time

Salary:
Research Assistant: £33,951 to £36,636 per annum
Research Associate: £36,636 to £46,069 per annum

Duration: 21 months

Benefits include a generous holiday package, the ability to buy additional leave days, a strong pension scheme, and various health and wellbeing initiatives.

We invite you to join the School of Engineering as a Research Assistant/Associate in Digital Twin Development. You will work in the NU‑DICE Lab and contribute to the WILSON Horizon Europe project, coordinating work with 15 EU partners.

• Develop and implement modules for federated digital twin technologies, including dashboards for visualizing buildings, districts, and city‑scale data.
• Connect diverse datasets and use cases (energy and non‑energy services) and collaborate with partners on federated data access mechanisms (IDS connectors and API).
• Support the development of use cases by enabling data sharing and utilisation across domains.
• Utilize the Newcastle Urban Observatory to demonstrate the federated digital twin approach and represent the university at project meetings across Europe.
• Assist in testing research outcomes in WILSON living labs and large‑scale pilots, e.g., the Newcastle Helix.
• Lead the technical development of digital twin interfaces, dashboards, and visualisation platforms for building, district, and city‑scale applications (for Research Associate).
• Design and implement BIM/GIS/IoT data integration workflows, including IFC, geospatial, semantic, time‑series and operational datasets.
• Develop federated digital twin approaches, including APIs, data access mechanisms, semantic interoperability workflows and data‑sharing processes.
• Determine appropriate technical and research methodologies, contribute original ideas to the project’s digital twin architecture and demonstrators.
• Attend and contribute to regular project update meetings, consortium meetings and technical partner meetings.
• Contribute to the writing up of research, including reports, papers and presentations, and assist in grant applications.
• Supply or coordinate own work with others, problem‑solve to achieve research objectives and support planning of the research.
• Present research findings to project leaders and wider audiences, including conferences and publications.
• Fetch, analyse, and interpret research data, draw conclusions, and supply input into dissemination.
• Support the use of research resources, including laboratories and specialist equipment.

• Knowledge of BIM, IFC, Open BIM, GIS and/or IoT data integration for built‑environment applications.
• Experience in processing, managing and visualising heterogeneous datasets, including building, geospatial, sensor, time‑series or operational data.
• Experience in scripting and data processing using Python or similar languages, including data cleaning, API integration and visualisation.
• Attention to detail and ability to work at a high level of accuracy.
• Strong presentation skills and ability to communicate complex information effectively.
• Proven ability to analyse data, write‑up results and collaborate with colleagues.
• Excellent IT skills in all major office applications.
• Personal initiative and creativity to solve research problems.
• MSc or near‑completion PhD in Building/Construction Informatics, Computing or Engineering (Civil, Architectural, Mechanical, Electrical) or related fields (for Research Assistant). PhD required for Research Associate.
• Leadership and substantial contributions to federated digital twin dashboards (Research Associate). Awareness of Data Spaces governance, semantic interoperability frameworks, and research environments.
• High analytical and problem‑solving capacity and strong communication skills (Research Associate).
• Experience with conference presentations and high‑quality publications (Research Associate).

• Positive collaboration within a multi‑skilled research team.
• Ability to negotiate, prioritise and meet multiple deadlines.
• Commitment to continuous professional development.
• Understanding of equality, inclusion and diversity best practice.

Please submit an up‑to‑date CV and a supporting statement outlining how you meet the essential and desirable criteria via the application link. For further information or informal discussion, contact Prof Mohamad Kassem (Mo) or Dr Xiang Xie (). Newcastle University is an equal opportunities employer and a Disability Confident employer.