[Turing-Southampton] Turing PI required to help deliver a workshop (defence and security programme)

[Susan Davies]

***apologies if you receive this more than once***

The Turing is offering an exciting opportunity for early career researchers and post-docs.

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory's (Dstl) Defence and Security Analysis Division exists to provide evidence to help their teams make effective decisions. Examples include assessing different force structures to see which would best allow the delivery of government policy, and assessing the cost benefit of investing in future military capabilities

Dstl uses wargames to explore the likely outcome of an engagement, given a particular size, shape, and allocation of capabilities and resources. Experienced Dstl staff and advisors currently command the virtual forces in these wargames. There is an aspiration to develop artificial intelligence to command these virtual forces, enabling the ability to conduct more rigorous and more efficient studies. We are looking for a PI to help deliver a workshop based around these aspirations.

This workshop will challenge a mixture of academic and defence researchers to develop an AI to command virtual forces in a simplified simulation. Dstl will provide the environment for the simulation in a similar format to the environments provided by Open AI in their Gym. The environment will enable participants to develop reinforcement learning solutions: it will provide observations on the current State of the environment, a list of valid Actions, and will return a Reward and updated State in response to the AI's choice of action.

The role of PI will provide an opportunity to work with Dstl in scoping and shaping the workshop, with potential for continued and expanded follow up work after the workshop. The Turing will administer contracts, IT and researchers, and fully support the PI, while their sole focus will be on the scientific questions to be investigated.

This is an exceptional opportunity to

  *   Build industry connections
  *   Work at the cross section of government and academia
  *   Be involved in multidisciplinary teams
  *   Get involved with the Turing institute

To apply, please send your CV and a brief cover letter explaining your interest and suitability to dsprogramme at turing.ac.uk<mailto:dsprogramme at turing.ac.uk> by Friday 2nd October.
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