Call for Champions 2025

Are you a PhD student at one of our four partner universities (Imperial, UCL, King’s College London, University of Westminster) who is passionate about developing software, collecting, processing and managing data, or maintaining and running computing infrastructure? Do you want to promote best practices in your faculty, school, college or department? Do you want to contribute to the advancement of technical skills and research excellence? If so, we invite you to apply for the role of Digital Research Technical Champion!

We are looking to build a diverse team of enthusiastic researchers who would like to inspire and engage their peers with new and interesting technical topics, tools and ideas. We’d like our cohort to include Champions from across our four partner universities’ faculties/departments/colleges/schools. Champions will plan and undertake activities to help raise the profile of research software, data and computing infrastructure best practices within their local research community.

Some examples of what you might do as a champion:

  • Act as an advocate for good practice in research software development, data management or the management and use of research computing infrastructure.
  • Run a survey of your colleagues to understand how they develop software, manage data or work with infrastructure in their research, and what challenges they face.
  • Investigate current use of digital best practices in your department/faculty/school/college.
  • Run coffee hour or clinic sessions to engage colleagues, answer technical questions and raise awareness of research software engineering, research data management and research infrastructure engineering.
  • Run training workshops to deliver skills in key best practices.
  • Host a research technical showcase for your colleagues (e.g. with a stand in your building’s lobby) to highlight software, data and infrastructure services offered within your university to local colleagues.

These are a few examples of how you might contribute as a Champion. We’ll also provide the opportunity for you to get input and support from technical experts at your university.

What’s in it for you?

Up to 50 hours to use flexibly over 12 months, depending on the activities you plan, paid at your university’s highest graduate teaching assistant rate.

You will also get:

  • A chance to meet and work with other PhD students from across your university and other universities in London who are interested in research software, data and computing infrastructure.
  • An opportunity to raise your profile as someone who cares about supporting the development of high quality, sustainable research outputs.
  • An opportunity to develop links and build your network across your university, working with people from a range of different research and central functions.
  • A chance to support your peers and share your knowledge, skills and enthusiasm for research technology.

The primary requirement for the role is enthusiasm for supporting a community of peers and learning new skills in research software, data or infrastructure. We don’t need you to be a software, data or infrastructure expert when you start, just to have an interest in your chosen area, especially if you work in a discipline which does not traditionally have a computational focus.

This scheme is curently open to PhD students at Imperial College London, King’s College London, UCL and the University of Westminster only.

Read the role description here

How to apply

Apply via your university

Deadline: end of May or early June, depending on your institution, check with your local contact.

For more information, contact us