Postdoctoral position in PRESENCE

Organisation/Company: Universitat de Barcelona

Department: OPIR

Research Field: Computer science

Researcher Profile: Recognised Researcher (R2)

Positions: Postdoc Positions

Country: Spain

Application Deadline: 10 Apr 2025 - 23:59 (Europe/Madrid)

Type of Contract: Temporary

Job Status: Full-time

Hours Per Week: 37.5

Offer Starting Date: 15 May 2025

Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Horizon Europe

Reference Number: Nº GA 101135025

Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

In virtual reality or more generally extended reality (XR), the concept of presence can be understood as a synthesis of interrelated psychophysical ingredients where multiple perceptual dimensions intervene. A better understanding of how specific aspects, such as plausibility (the illusion that virtual events are really happening), co-presence (the illusion of being with others), or place illusion (the feeling of being there) impact XR experiences is key to improve their quality. The availability and performance of current technologies do not reach high levels of presence in XR, which is essential to get us closer than ever to the perennial VR dream: to be anywhere, doing anything, together with others, from any place. PRESENCE develops technologies that address these issues.

At UB, we are responsible for evaluating various aspects of the illusion of presence in XR. This means programming virtual environments of various use cases and designing, implementing, and analysing the results of experimental studies.

The successful candidate must have good experience in programming XR applications (e.g., using Unity 3D), and it would be an advantage to have previous experience in experimental studies.

The University of Barcelona obtained a grant for the PRESENCE project, a European project awarded to Dr Mel Slater, Director of the Event Lab (www.melslater.me). The Event Lab is an internationally known research lab in the field of virtual reality, addressing interdisciplinary problems in psychology and neuroscience using virtual reality. Please see publications on http://publicationslist.org/melslater.

Minimum Requirements

• All applicants must have a PhD in Computer Science or be close to submitting the PhD at the time of application.
• Have developed significant programs for virtual reality applications.
• All applicants must have extensive experience in computer programming (for example, C, C#, Objective C), and demonstrated expertise using systems such as Unity 3D.
• The applicants must have been awarded or be about to submit a PhD that includes substantial work in computer graphics or virtual reality.
• It will be an advantage to have been involved in the preparation and execution of human experimental studies using virtual reality.

Languages: ENGLISH Level Excellent

Research Field: Computer science

Years of Research Experience: 4 - 10

Additional Information

Eligibility criteria:

• Adequacy of the CV (maximum 50)
• Specialty doctorate (30), generic doctorate (10)
• Letter of motivation (maximum 20)
• Experience in the field (maximum 30).

Minimum score to pass the selection process: 50/100 points.

Selection process: An interview will be conducted if the evaluation committee deems it necessary.

Required documentation:

• CV (include contact details of people from whom references or reports can be requested)

*Be in possession of the doctor's degree at the time of the formalization of the contract.

Additional comments:

Duration of the contract of employment: 12 months, renewable up to 31/12/2026.

The candidate proposed for hiring must accept the job offer within 3 working days from the date of notification of the selection. Priority will be given to people with disabilities (Law 89/2015 of June 2, reserve of quota 2% in favour of people with disabilities in companies of 50 or more people). Be aware that the starting date set in this offer is an estimate date.

The official starting date will depend on the bureaucratic time that will take the preparation of the labour contract and presentation of the necessary documents to be hired by the selected candidate.

For additional information regarding this offer, please contact Dr. Mel Slater: melslater@ub.edu.

The postdoctoral appointee will be expected to help define the details of the research programme and play a leading role in its execution. All applicants must be highly motivated towards research and publications.

The research will be conducted in English and all appointees will have excellent written and spoken English.