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.
The new institute is building up the design-research-education-application content by establishing
5 content areas
with trans-disciplinary cooperation towards 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
IDI is building an international faculty team and supporting staff, and is now seeking for
Associate Professors and Lecturers
to join the teams and together build up and operate design-research-education-application towards the highest international standards, with global scientific quality and highest industrial / economic relevance.
Responsibilities:
For each of the 5 content-areas faculty members will work under the leadership of a senior full Professor / group leader on development of the content of the particular area and in cooperation with the other content areas to integrate the own specialism in a balanced way, into the integrated field of IDI, in design research, education and industrial follow up.
Main tasks are, for each of the specified content areas under the leadership of the full professor:
· Contributing to build up and carry out trans-disciplinary research according to highest international standards.
Contributing to attract 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 Ma-theses projects for the content area and for the integrated IDI field
Initiating and supervising innovative cross-disciplinary design projects.
· Contributing to knowledge transfer to industry.
· 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 will be approved by international experts in the field.
· The major, PhD thesis, 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.
· Interested in cooperation with foreign universities, research institutions and/or companies.
· Capable of teaching in English.
· Full time required.
· Generally candidates for associate professors should be under 40 years of age, and candidates for lecturers should be under 35 years of age.
Additional information:
A brief description for each of the content areas 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 salary, social insurances and other benefits in accordance with relevant regulations. And a sum of money will be entitled for settlement.
Or an annual salary system (including salary, allowances, social insurances and benefits in accordance with relevant state regulations) is adopted.
· A start-up research fund will be provided
Documentation Details:
· A comprehensive curriculum vitae
· Copies of advanced degrees and certification of present employment if applicable
· 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 goal and applicants future contribution to IDI .
· Three recommendation letters from renowned experts in the field
Closing Date:
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 yingft@gmail.com
Further info: www.ZJU.edu.cn
