Are you an ambitious and enthusiastic researcher with an interest in human behaviour and advanced data analytics or modelling? Do you have a passion for tackling complex problems such as traffic safety and efficiency, from their theoretical inception to their real-world application? Would you like to collaborate with a team of researchers who are at the forefront of research in traffic psychology, and who have in recent years pushed the envelope towards understanding and modelling how human road users interact with each other, with automated vehicles, and with the infrastructure?

Road transport is central to society all over the world yet remains severely negatively affected by problems such as crashes and congestion. These problems not only affect travellers, but also generate social and economic losses to society, thus requiring measures in the form of traffic policies, infrastructure investments and novel technological solutions. In order to properly design and evaluate the effectiveness of such interventions, a better understanding of road user behaviour is required, building on real-world data and solid theoretical foundations. 

This Research Fellow position is a collaboration between the School of Civil Engineering and the University of Leeds Virtuocity centre for city simulation. Drawing on the broad cross-disciplinary makeup of our existing research, you will be able to shape the research topic according to your interests. You might for example choose to focus on analysing and learning from large datasets, or on computational modelling of human behaviour. 

Whether you are a traffic psychologist or a modeller with expertise in computational methods (perhaps you have worked in both areas), you will bring your knowledge and experience that will allow you to assert your independence while furthering an agenda that prioritises proper consideration of human behaviour for real-world applications. At the same time, you will become part of an international and cross-disciplinary team that brings different expertise and substantial experience in supporting young researchers in a key phase of their career.

As the University of Leeds is emphasising the importance of research impact, your input has enormous potential in solving significant challenges in traffic safety and efficiency and ultimately contributing to make informed decisions regarding design of policy, infrastructure, and technologies.

This role will be based at the university of Leeds campus and there is scope for it to be undertaken in a hybrid manner. We are open to discussing flexible working arrangements. 

To explore the post further or for any queries you may have, please contact: 

Professor Carlo G. Prato, Professor of Transportation Engineering

Tel: +44 (0)113 343 2282

Email: [email protected] 

The key contacts at Virtuocity are:

Professor Gustav Markkula and Professor Oliver Carsten