Knowledge Mobilization Lead (2 - Year Term)

Date Posted: 12/03/2024
Req ID: 40937
Faculty/Division: Faculty of Arts & Science
Department: Acceleration Consortium
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00057060

Description:

About us:

The Faculty of Arts & Science is the heart of Canada’s leading university and one of the most comprehensive and diverse academic divisions in the world. The strength of Arts & Science derives from our combined teaching and research excellence in the humanities, sciences and social sciences across 29 departments, seven colleges and 46 interdisciplinary centres, institutes and programs.

We can only realize our mission with the dedication and excellence of engaged staff and faculty. The diversity of opportunities and perspectives within the Faculty reflect the local and global landscape and the need for curiosity, innovative thinking and collaboration. At Arts & Science, we take pride in our legacy of innovation and discovery that has changed the way we think about the world.

The Acceleration Consortium (AC) at the University of Toronto (U of T) is leading a transformative shift in scientific discovery that will accelerate technology development and commercialization. The AC is a global community of academia, industry, and government that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, materials sciences, and high-throughput chemistry to create self-driving laboratories (SDLs), also called materials acceleration platforms (MAPs). These autonomous labs rapidly design materials and molecules needed for a sustainable, healthy, and resilient future, with applications ranging from renewable energy and consumer electronics to drugs. AC Staff Scientists will advance the infield of AI-driven autonomous discovery and develop the materials and molecules required to address society’s largest challenges, such as climate change, water pollution, and future pandemics.

The Acceleration Consortium received a $200M Canadian First Research Excellence Grant for seven years to develop self-driving labs for chemistry and materials, the largest ever grant to a Canadian University.



Your opportunity:

Reporting to the Director, Strategy & Partnerships and working closely with Acceleration Consortium’s communications and training staff, the Knowledge Mobilization Lead will support the knowledge mobilization efforts of the Acceleration Consortium by developing unique programs to describe, communicate, and amplify the Acceleration Consortium’s training and research efforts. In this role you will support research translation through the facilitation of partnerships, unique events, training programs, project development, policy briefs, and grant writing. You will spur collaboration and build capacity to bring Acceleration Consortium research to a variety of audiences including the academic, industry, government, and public sectors. Your skills in building community, impactful training, writing grants and supporting a collective impact will help support the adoption of accelerated discovery tools by Canadian researchers and industry accelerating the development of materials and molecules for applications such as renewable energy, renewable polymers, and therapeutics that will improve the lives of Canadian.


Your responsibilities will include:

• Developing overall project design
• Drafting documents for knowledge translation purposes
• Writing project-specific proposals and briefings
• Fostering and maintaining positive relations with stakeholders to support knowledge translation activities
• Drafting and editing training content
• Developing strategic plans to determine the unit's programs and activities
• Developing content for instructional workshops
• Facilitating educational workshops and seminars

Essential Qualifications:

• Master's Degree or an acceptable combination of equivalent education and experience.
• Minimum five years experience in an academic and research environment, leading knowledge mobilization and translation, and supporting research funding initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience with project design and execution.
• Experience creating and managing knowledge mobilization networks.
• Experience developing and maintaining relationships across multiple stakeholder groups, including including the private sector, public sector, civil society and universities
• Experience with KM approaches such as visual thinking, infographics, social media, video clips, plain language communication, experiential stories and/or photo-voice essays.
• Experience creating, organizing and hosting in person and virtual events for knowledge translation, including workshops.
• Experience producing network analysis, document analysis and/or systematic reviews.
• Experience drafting grant applicants.
• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills, both verbal and written, including strong proof-reading and editing skills.
• Strong organizational and analytical skills.
• Ability to deal effectively with multiple priorities and projects with conflicting deadlines while maintaining a high degree of accuracy and high quality.
• Ability to exercise initiative, tact, discretion, problem-solving skills and to work under pressure to meet deadlines.
• Ability to assess processes and procedures, utilize critical thinking and synthesize information from multiple sources.
• Ability to work both independently as well as collaboratively within cross-disciplinary teams in amulti-disciplinary multi-province team of senior decision-makers, exercising initiative, tact, discretion, problem-solving skills and to work under pressure to meet deadlines.

Assets (Nonessential):

• Experience working with Indigenous peoples, partners, or organizations.

To be successful in this role you will be:

• Communicator
• Diplomatic
• Multi-tasker
• Problem solver
• Resourceful
• Team player

Closing Date: 12/19/2024, 11:59PM ET
Employee Group: USW 
Appointment Type: Grant - Term 
Schedule: Full-Time
Pay Scale Group & Hiring Zone:  
USW Pay Band 15 -- $95,627. with an annual step progression to a maximum of $122,290. Pay scale and job class assignment is subject to determination pursuant to the Job Evaluation/Pay Equity Maintenance Protocol. 
Job Category: Administrative / Managerial

Lived Experience Statement
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.