Programme Officer, Climate Solutions Catalyst - Undaunted

Job description

Job summary

The Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment, was established at Imperial College London in 2007 to act as a central hub to pull together the different work taking place across the university that can help tackle climate change and environmental challenges. The innovation dimension of the Grantham Institute’s work is run under the banner Undaunted.

Undaunted’s mission is to nurture a climate innovation ecosystem that enables the creation of scalable innovative solutions to the climate challenge at pace. To achieve this mission, Undaunted is building a pipeline of routes into climate entrepreneurship, incubating innovators through our Greenhouse accelerator programme, delivering an ecosystem that empowers impact and creating a landscape where climate innovation can flourish.  

We are now launching an exciting new experimental activity at the very start of the climate innovation pipeline: the Climate Solutions Catalyst. The objective of the programme is to test the hypothesis that the UK university sector has already made discoveries and inventions that can help tackle climate change, if only they can be found and supported properly. Working collaboratively with as many other UK universities as possible, and a full range of stakeholders, this two-year trial programme will try and unearth neglected Climate Solutions from the full breadth and depth of the UK research community, and then test potential support offers for these solutions and the researchers and innovators that discovered them.

This project has the potential to have significant impact in tackling climate change and improving the climate innovation pipeline in the UK and, eventually, more widely.

We are looking for someone with excellent project and programme management skills and a strong interest in climate change to support the delivery of this programme. You will work for the Head of the Climate Solutions Catalyst to ensure the successful delivery of our trial programme. You will work as a team with the Science and Innovation Officer and the Machine Learning Research Fellow, and will receive support from the wider Undaunted and Grantham Institute team on other aspects eg, communications, finance etc.

Duties and responsibilities

You will have a critical role in delivering practical aspects of the programme. We would expect this postholder to work together with the Science and Innovation Officer to organise and convene experts as part of the search process including sandpits and advisory groups and deliver accurate and timely monitoring and reporting for all phases of the project: searching for solutions; assessing existing support mechanisms for the commercialisation of early-stage discoveries; and the delivery of support to researchers. You will work with the Science and Innovation Officer to ensure active communications with a range of researchers at various stages in the process, and the organisation and delivery of events eg, sandpits, innovation training, advisory group meetings etc.

You will be an active member of the Undaunted team, working with other members of the team to deliver on our wider mission to drive forward climate innovation in the UK and beyond.

Essential requirements

We are looking for someone with experience of working in any part of the broad climate, innovation or research community with knowledge and expertise of delivering programmes and events. You will have the interest, flexibility and drive to engage actively with a new programme and the curiosity to explore the trial aspects of this programme, responding to findings and insights provided by a range of sources.

You will have a combination of strong analytical and communication skills and excellent organisational and project management abilities.

Further information

This is a part time (0.5 FTE), fixed term position for 2 years. You will be based across South Kensington Campus and White City Campus.

Should you require any further details on the role please contact: Gosia Gayer – g.gayer@imperial.ac.uk 

This is a hybrid role.  Staff working in roles that are suitable for hybrid working will normally be expected to work 60% of their time onsite. The opportunity for hybrid working will be discussed at interview.

More information is available on the following web page: Work Location Categories (from 30 September 2023) | Administration and support services | Imperial College London

Documents

• Job Description Programme Officer.pdf