Knowledge Exchange Manager Life Sciences and Health, University of Essex

Department

The Research and Enterprise Office (REO) is an Administrative Section within the University’s Professional Services. The Director of the REO reports to the Registrar and Secretary of the university. The REO supports the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) and the Faculty Executive Deans in the development and implementation of the university’s Research Strategy.

The REO delivers services to the University’s academic community to support a range of research, impact and knowledge exchange activities. The section also contributes to a wide range of business engagement activities and facilitates the delivery of services to business as well as to the wider economic community. Its range of activities includes:

- Research strategy and policy;

- Identification of funding opportunities;

- Research governance and ethics;

- Supporting the development and submission of research grant applications;

- Grant and contract negotiation, costing and pricing;

- Financial management of research awards;

- Co-ordination of the University’s REF and KEF submissions

- Research impact and Knowledge Exchange, including the management of intellectual property, the commercialisation of research, licences, spin-outs and consultancy;

- Business Incubation facilities;

- Engagement with local and regional communities in the public private and third sectors;

- Managing key accounts with industry;

- Promoting the university’s research expertise and related services and managing the resulting customer relationships.

Duties of the Role

The University of Essex has an exciting opportunity for two experienced Knowledge Exchange Managers to join our Enterprise Team within the Research and Enterprise Office at the Colchester campus to support our activity in this area. For each post, the role holder will work closely with academic colleagues in either:

Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE) and Maths
Life Sciences and Health
to develop business relationships that will allow impact to be achieved and external income to be leveraged.

The Knowledge Exchange Manager for CSEE and Maths will have a technical appreciation of AI (including machine learning, natural language processing and computer vision), embedded systems and related research areas.

The Knowledge Exchange Manager for Life Sciences and Health will have a technical appreciation of research interests within the Departments of Life Sciences, Psychology, Health and Social Care and Sport Rehabilitation and Exercise Science.

Whilst focusing on these departments, innovation projects for each role may be interdisciplinary spanning the three faculties of the University.

The successful applicants will have an understanding of the university research environment and/or commercial research and development (R&D) and will proactively develop new relationships with businesses that can benefit from knowledge exchange support in these areas to put in place collaborative research, consultancy and contract research projects.

Skills and qualifications required

The successful candidates will be educated to degree level or equivalent qualification/ experience together with the ability to understand the technical basis for projects relevant to Computer Science and Maths or Life Sciences and Health respectively.

You will have proven knowledge and understanding of university-business relationships and the ability to work effectively with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, taking a proactive approach to identifying Knowledge Exchange opportunities and partnership development. Excellent verbal and written communication skills are essential to the role together with the ability to coordinate tasks with other team members. Accustomed to working in a deadline driven environment your organisational skills, attention to detail and the ability to use online systems to track workflow will underpin your successful management and delivery of projects.

We are seeking self-motivated, flexible and committed individuals to join the team and would love to hear from you if you feel you meet the expectations for this role.