Research Assistant - Conversation Agent Engineer

The University of Surrey is a global community of ideas and people, dedicated to life-changing education and research. 

We are ambitious and have a bold vision of what we want to achieve - shaping ourselves into one of the best universities in the world, which we are achieving through the talents and endeavour of every employee.  

Our culture empowers people to achieve this aim and to collectively, and individually, make a real difference.  

The role

Applications are invited for a Research Assistant in the School of Arts, Humanities and the Creative Industries to join a project entitled CREATION: A Dementia-friendly AI Creativity Solution. The project is funded by the Economic & Social Research Council and will work with experts by experience to co-design and evaluate an accessible conversational agent to prompt creative oral storytelling by people living with dementia.  

CREATION responds to a previous user-requirement study with people living with dementia who expressed their willingness to interact with AI to receive what they called a “regular dose of creativity'. CREATION will build on those participants’ design recommendations to ensure the agent is dementia-friendly, accessible and inclusive. We will use participatory design methods to work iteratively with a co-design group and an expert user group to create, test and refine a series of prototype agents. 

The appointee will join a diverse and impactful School in an internationally recognised University with a growing global reputation in person-centred AI research and practice.  

About you

The successful candidate will have prior experience of creating or adapting conversational agents, with speech understanding capabilities, ideally to respond to the profiles, needs and capacities of particular user groups. It would be an advantage if the candidate had experience of interacting with people with dementia, but this isn't essential at this stage. The candidate will ideally be working towards a PhD in Computer Science or related fields. 

The post will commence in late April and run until the end of 2025. The post is offered part-time at 0.3 FTE (equating to approximately 11 hours/week over the lifetime of the study). The post-holder will be able to work remotely but may be expected to come onto the University’s Stag Hill campus for a small number of key meetings and/or activities.

How to apply

To apply to this post, please send your CV and a 1-page cover letter explaining:

For informal inquiries or to find out more about CREATION, please contact the Principal Investigator, Dr Stephen Fay: s.fay@surrey.ac.uk

Interviews will likely be held week commencing 31st March.

Closing Date: 28 Mar 2025

Area: Technical & Experimental

Salary: £10,240 to £10,839 per annum pro rata (0.3 FTE) Fixed Term until 31/08/2025