Founded in 1897, Zhejiang University (ZJU) in
In view of future new economic paradigms, fast growing international markets and the development of the high-tech-based creative industry, ZJU is building up the International Design Institute (IDI) with focus on the design discipline, integrating knowledge from technology, user and human, interaction and art design as well as business aspects. IDI’s research combines academia / scientific design and the creative industry / new economy and is aiming at global scientific quality with highest industrial / economic relevance (university and industry). There are research cooperations with partner universities worldwide. The combination of design research, research embedded education and new business will boost economy by supporting a strong development of the knowledge-intensive creative industrial sector.
As a general goal IDI will have a leading role in the development of ZJU-design towards a research based scientific discipline.
IDI is building an international faculty team and supporting staff, and is now seeking for
5 senior faculty members as full Professors
to develop and lead 5 content areas and together creating the integrated content of IDI:
Creative high-tech based design of Intelligent Systems, Products and
Services as a scientific discipline:
Concept Design
Technology Design
Interaction Design
Service and Business Design
Design Science
Responsibilities:
For each of the 5 content-areas the leading Professor will – as group leader – set up a group, responsible for this field of knowledge and will cooperate with the other group leaders to bring this specific content in a balanced way, into the integrated field of IDI, in research, education and industrial follow up.
Main tasks of the leading profs are, for each of the specified content areas:
· Building up and carrying out trans-disciplinary research according to highest international standards.
Contributing to ZJU’s development of design towards a scientific discipline.
Attracting research funding from industry and national and international research foundations.
· Building up and carrying out education, teaching core courses and instructing graduate and undergraduate students
Contributing to IDI-education in PhD-, Ma- and special Ba-programs in Design
Supervising PhD- and Ma-theses projects for the content area and for the integrated IDI field
Initiating and supervising innovative cross-disciplinary design projects.
· Knowledge transfering to industry and contributing to the institutes incubator facilities for new business development as follow-up on results of design research and promising PhD- and Ma-projects.
· Leading the team for the concerning area.
· Contributing to the development of IDI, integrated in ZJU, towards a design institute at highest international level.
· Stimulating the cooperation with international partner universities and research institutions.
Qualifications and Requirements:
· Capable of innovative, trans-disciplinary design thinking
· Doctor degree in a relevant field from a renowned university / department.
· Capable of researching across fields. Applicants’ research ability and results are approved by international experts in the field.
· The major or research direction of applicants should be in design, technology, business and/or user aspects, with attention for cross-disciplinary integration and a team-player attitude.
· Experience of cooperation with foreign universities, research institutions and/or companies.
· Experience of joint cooperation of education, research and industry.
· Capable of teaching in English.
· Full time required.
A special challenge for a fast start of your design / research / education team :
IDI is in parallel seeking for Junior Faculty Members as Associate Professors and Lecturers .
We encourage full – professor candidates, who are interested to introduce one or two junior faculty members to work in their new IDI team to be build up, to present their proposals on this as well.
Additional information per position:
To offer the opportunity to interested candidates of creative focus development, and so leaving scope for the content of the ‘letter of interest’ as mentioned below, content requirements are not specified in detail.
A brief description of the field for each of the positions is presented here:
Concept Design
Creative concept design of intelligent systems, products and services
Concept(ual) design in the field of intelligent systems, products and services starts from society, from problem- and opportunity-finding related to peoples activities in their home-, work-, entertainment-, (health)care-, shopping- etc. environment, and how technology can be used to solve problems or create new or adapted challenges for society and for economy.
(Culture dependent) trend-watching and trend prediction to get insight in new developments where society, users and future markets are ripe for, is an important starting point as well.
Idea generation and designing innovative concepts for intelligent system, products and services needs a sound insight and overview of societal aspects on the one hand and on the other hand possibilities and limitations of newest technologies. ( From those activities research questions will be formulated for the social and technical sciences ).
Typical cooperations within the institute are with the field of ‘Service and Business Design’ as well as ‘Design Science’.
Research and education are strongly interwoven.
Technology Design
Design of high-tech intelligent systems: technology perspective
In high-tech intelligent systems, the input of newest technology is indispensable for the operation of ambient intelligent environments and systems, containing connected and networked intelligent devices to create services for users.
Systems are adaptive, self learning and anticipate in a user friendly way to users needs and (predicted) personalized wishes.
Newest technology from various sub-disciplines like IT, computer science, sensors and actuators, new materials etc. are a basis for new concepts of systems and products.
There is a strong link to the field of ‘Interaction Design’ and to the technology ‘hinterland’ to get insight in and have access to newest results of technology research, including upcoming developments ( and to be aware of their limitations ).
This part of the design field can play an interesting role as well in the process of bringing the results of techno-research via new intelligent systems and products to the market: Design as a value multiplier for specific results of basic research.
Research and education are strongly interwoven.
Interaction Design
Interaction design for intelligent systems, products and services: user perspective
Today’s and future designs and especially intelligent systems, products and services need a huge amount of newest technology as basis for functioning in a technical sense. On the other hand the user is interested in the service to be delivered, with the product and system being an enabler and with all hidden technology invisible and especially non-obtrusive.
Systems and products must be user friendly and attractive as key and distinguishing selling points in the international market.
This means new ways of interaction between system and user to be investigated and integrated into the design concept.
As physical products must be attractive – cultural dependant – to international groups of users, design arts is very important in this respect and in parallel, regarding user friendliness, giving product-styling and form-giving a functional role in the interaction process as well.
This field , concentrating on ‘interaction design and design arts’ , has important links to the fields of ‘Technology Design’ and ‘Service and Business Design’ and needs input from technical sciences, social sciences, and from the fast expanding world of new media for connectivity in society.
Service and Business Design
Service and business process design: high-tech and high-human based
The end-user is in fact interested in a service to be delivered whereas the intelligent system or product is the enabler to create this service in an optimal way: with lowest effort for the user, cost – effective, reliable and attractive. This can be applied to several fields in society like health care, entertainment, urban mobility, sports, education, living / working environment etc.
Here the research focus is on the creative design of innovative high-tech based services – supported by new intelligent systems and products - , interwoven with the creative design of new business paradigms.
There will be a preferred cooperation with the content-areas ‘Concept Design’ and ‘Interaction Design’.
Regular entrepreneurial and industrial engineering types of existing knowledge will be part of the education programs, as e.g. bringing a new design / system / product to the international market; managing cost-effective manufacturing; or setting up a new business / company for a new product or service.
Where possible, education will be supported by ZJU departments and/or international partners
Design Science
Development of future creative design towards a scientific discipline
The goal of this new creative field is to further develop design towards a scientific discipline equivalent with the traditional fields of basic sciences. Cooperation takes place with the design oriented departments and schools at ZJU.
Focus is on the development of design-research, the way to develop new scientific knowledge and methodologies , to capture design knowledge and methods and to create interactive ways to re-use information and previous results for design practice in academia and industry.
Attention is paid to the process of creativity and idea generation, and new ways are to be developed to present innovative results of design research to expose design and the creative synthesis as a scientific discipline.
Development includes the design of a future trans-disciplinary and flexible infrastructure for the design process: an ambient intelligent design support environment and a follow up on virtual reality design tools to be used by the university and the industry.
Special attention will be given to design supporting tools for (international) co-located collaborating design teams.
Remuneration:
· ZJU will provide decent compensation. The exact amount differs from person to person according to agreement.
· Those qualified may apply for one of the apartments specifically reserved by ZJU for top-level talents. Others may be entitled to a sum of money for settlement.
· Research funds will be allocated by ZJU.
Documentation Details:
· A comprehensive curriculum vitae
· Copies of advanced degrees and certification of present employment
· List of publications and other results of scientific design work in the past five years
· Addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses of three to five experts as references
· A letter of interest addressing vision, objectives and goals and applicants future contribution to IDI.
· Three recommendation letters from renowned experts in the field
Closing Date: April 30, 2012
Contact
Mr. Xue or Ms.Liu
Add: Office of International Design Institute,
or
Department of Human Resources,
No.866,
E-mail: idi@zju.edu.cn tr@zju.edu.cn
Tel: +86-571-88981165, 88981345, 88981390
Fax: +86-571-87951315, 88981976
Content info on research, education and structure: schouten@zju.edu.cn
Further info: www.ZJU.edu.cn
