Research Associate; Lead Scientist - Turnkey Systems

Below you will find the details for the position including any supplementary documentation and questions you should review before applying for the opening.

The University of Regina is a public research university with a strong commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship, graduate education, and research that engages local, national, and global challenges. Located in Regina, Saskatchewan, the University is situated in a mid‑sized and increasingly diverse city in the Canadian prairies. The University is situated on Treaty 4 Territory—the territories of the Nêhiyawak, Anihšinapek, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda peoples—and the traditional homeland of the Métis/Michif Nation, with a presence in Treaty 6.

The position will focus on designing, developing, and integrating turnkey sensing systems across the full electronics and mechanical lifecycle—from multilayer PCB design and microcontroller programming to graphical user interface (GUI) development and mechanical CAD modelling (AutoCAD, Fusion 360, Solid Works). The role involves system‑level integration of IoT connectivity, embedded systems, and diverse AI/ML techniques for sensor platforms, while also sitting at the core of mechatronics and swarm systems engineering for UAVs and drones operating across air, land, and water, including unmanned aerial, ground, surface, and amphibious/aerial‑aquatic platforms.

• You will be leading a dynamic team tof 3 engineers/technitions and students.
• Design and develop multilayer PCBs for sensor interfacing, signal conditioning, data acquisition, and power management using industry-standard EDA tools (e.g., Altium, KiCad, Eagle).
• Program microcontrollers (ARM Cortex, ESP
  32, Arduino, PIC , or equivalent) in C/C++, Python, or Micro Python for real‑time data acquisition, actuator control, communication protocols, and low‑power operation.
• Develop intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) using Qt, PyQt, LabVIEW, or web‑based dashboards for real‑time data visualization, remote system control, and end‑user interaction.
• Lead system‑level design integration, ensuring seamless interaction between sensing materials, analog front‑ends, digital processing units, communication modules, and power subsystems.
• Create mechanical enclosures, mounting fixtures, and system housings using CAD software, including AutoCAD, Fusion 360, and Solid Works, to protect electronic assemblies for field‑deployable and ruggedized environments.
• Implement IoT connectivity (Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, LoRaWAN, Zigbee, cellular, MQTT , HTTP / REST ) and integrate AI/ML algorithms for on‑device sensor data processing, including
  • Edge AI:
    Tensor Flow Lite Micro, CMSIS
    -NN, or similar frameworks for real‑time inference on microcontrollers.
  • Predictive Analytics:
    Time‑series forecasting (LSTM , GRU , Prophet) for predictive maintenance and environmental trend analysis.
  • Anomaly Detection:
    Isolation Forest, Autoencoders, or One‑Class SVM for identifying outliers and sensor faults.
  • Classification:
    Support Vector Machines (SVM ), Random Forest, Gradient Boosting (XGBoost, LightGBM), and Neural Networks for pattern recognition and event detection.
  • Regression Models:
    Linear/Polynomial Regression, Ridge, Lasso, and Gaussian Process Regression for sensor calibration and concentration prediction.
  • Unsupervised Learning: K‑Means, DBSCAN , and PCA for clustering and dimensionality reduction of high‑dimensional sensor data.
  • Reinforcement Learning:
    Application of RL for adaptive sensor control and optimization of system parameters.
  • Deep Learning: CNNs for spectrogram/image…