- Location: Holbeach
- Salary: £38,784
- Department: Research
- Closing date: 8 November 2026
- Note: Please note, this post is fixed-term and full time until the 31st May 2028
The University of Lincoln is seeking a highly motivated Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) with substantial academic research background, with demonstrated expertise in food safety and hygiene or food process validation to join the Vitrum project. Vitrum is an ambitious Innovate UK-funded collaboration developing a commercially deployable robotic harvesting system for on-the-vine tomatoes, helping address labour shortages in UK horticulture through the automation of protected crop harvesting.
Led by Dogtooth Technologies in partnership with APS Produce and the University of Lincoln, the project brings together expertise in robotics, AI-driven perception, commercial horticulture and food safety to validate robotic harvesting under real production conditions.
The Role
You will lead research on the food safety and quality assurance aspects of robotic harvesting, with a particular focus on hygiene validation, microbiological challenge studies and process validation. Working closely with robotics researchers, academic colleagues and industry partners, you will contribute to the development and validation of a harvesting system that meets food safety, hygiene and regulatory requirements ahead of commercial deployment.
Key areas of research will include:
- Microbiological safety and contamination risks associated with robotic harvesting.
- Process validation and microbiological challenge studies.
- Hygiene validation of robotic harvesting equipment and food-contact surfaces.
- Evaluation of cleaning and sanitation approaches.
- Cross-contamination risks within commercial glasshouse environments.
- The impact of mechanised harvesting on product safety and quality.
This is a highly applied research role, offering opportunities to undertake trials in both University research facilities and commercial production environments while contributing to high-quality project outputs, publications and future research activity.
About You
You will ideally hold a PhD in Microbiology, Food Safety, Food Science, Biological Sciences or a closely related discipline. You will have strong knowledge of food microbiology, food safety, hygiene regulation and validation methodologies, together with hands on experience of designing and conducting microbiological experiments, process validation, challenge studies and/or hygiene validation.
You will be able to design and manage independent research, communicate complex scientific information effectively and work collaboratively within a multidisciplinary academic and industrial team. Experience of trials in food production environments or fresh produce and horticultural food safety research would be advantageous.
This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to innovative research at the intersection of food safety, microbiology, robotics and commercial horticulture, while working with leading academic and industrial partners.
As an Athena SWAN Bronze Award holder, the University is committed to advancing gender equality in STEM and welcomes applications from under-represented groups.