Scientific Assistant

EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is one of the most dynamic university campuses in Europe and ranks among the top 20 universities worldwide. The EPFL employs more than 6,500 people supporting the three main missions of the institution: education, research and innovation. The EPFL campus offers an exceptional working environment at the heart of a community of more than 17,000 people, including over 12,500 students and 4,000 researchers from more than 120 different countries.

About the Time Machine Unit and Lausanne Time Machine project :
The Lausanne Time Machine is organized into parallel projects that focus on different aspects of the territory sharing common methodologies, technologies, and standards. It also includes projects for the re-documentation of spatial databases, which are currently incompatible with other information systems. The projects aim to reconstruct the information system’s structuring data on historical mapping and population. To do this, projects on historical cartography and demographic sources such as censuses and civil status are being developed primarily. Considerable interest also occupies iconographic sources. Historical documents are being analyzed by applying new computational extraction methods specifically developed for the sources to be interpreted.
The Lausanne Time Machine initiative also aims to encourage young researchers to propose research topics and to enhance the value of studies carried out during their thesis or postdoctoral projects. Ongoing research and results already obtained can be the subject of training courses and seminars. A joint EPFL-Unil course entitled Digital Urban History: The Lausanne Time Machine, running since 2020, student project work is published online and some datasets can be reused for your own research.
The Time Machine Unit is an interdisciplinary group involve in extracting, aggregating, publishing and analysing historical data, applying methods and technologies that have come out of digital and heuristics of historical big data approaches. The goals include facilitating access to historical information by creating simulation models of the past. 

Your mission :

The Time Machine Unit works with multiple heritage institutions and research groups on a European scale, having access to several datasets that can be shared online.
These datasets cover Lausanne, Switzerland, and more generally Europe.
Your mission is to collect datasets for web publications and interface with the Time Machine Organization, Europeana, and other heritage organizations to decide what data and how to proceed for sharing and exploitation. For this kind of work, it is essential to know the field of ‘heritage engineering and to have good cultural mediator skills.
Another aspect of the mission concerns the continuity of curation of ongoing editorial publications done by the Time Machine Unit, and covering European cities.

Main duties and responsibilities include :

• Participate in all meetings and joint activities of Time Machine unit and heritage institutions
• Ensure continuity in communications
• Collect and prepare geographic datasets useful for publication on the web
• Ensure continuity of coordination of actions to publish datasets and historical analysis also in a paper format.

Your profile :

• Have experience and skills in dealing with heritage institutions.
• Have a practice of managing geographic and 2D data formats.
• Be able to follow a graphic editorial project.
• Willingness to write good documentation.
• Good communication skills.
• Strong collaborative and team spirit.
• Autonomous and accountable with a proactive approach.
• Efficient, committed to deadlines and concerned with production readiness.
• Knowledge of French (mandatory), English (preferred)
• Comfortable in an international and multi-cultural context.

We offer :

• Opportunity to join an experienced and highly motivated interdisciplinary team conducting innovative and relevant research at the intersection of computer science and humanities research.
• Applied research framework: what you will develop will be deployed in production and directly used by a community of researchers.
• Work in an interdisciplinary team at the intersection of History, computer sciences, Urban History, Digital Humanities
• Flexible working hours and teleworking.
• Located in Lausanne, Switzerland, EPFL has a highly international environment, state-of-the-art research facilities, and is consistently ranked among the world’s leading institutions in scientific research. Lausanne is a vibrant and cosmopolitan city centre in a unique natural environment with great outdoor activities (Jura, Alps, Lake Leman). Salaries and benefits are internationally competitive.

Start date :
01.04.2024

Term of employment :
Fixed-term (CDD)

Work rate :
20-40%

Duration :

1-year contract, renewable

Remark :
Only candidates who applied through EPFL website or our partner Jobup’s website will be considered. Files sent by agencies without a mandate will not be taken into account.

Reference :
Job Nb 3297

apply online