Assistant Director, External Engagement

Reporting to the Dean and Associate Dean (Research), you will play an active role in coordinating the research, international and business collaboration endeavours at the College, and working across the schools to develop position papers, research business proposals and reports with the aim of fostering collaborations with local and overseas partners. In this regard, you with work with Schools to strategize engagement plans, set up meetings to engage players for collaborations and subsequently negotiate and structure research and academic collaboration and Intellectual Property agreements.

Additionally, you will also work closely with the Schools in the College on various initiatives, programmes and activities in anticipation of national and global funding opportunities presented by the dynamic research landscape and will need to interface and engage collegially with both internal and external stakeholders.

Responsibilities:

Lead strategic development with external partners

• Serve as point of contract for major external partners.

• Lead the discussion of major research programs with external partners.

• Facilitate partners to interact with public agencies (e.g., EDB, NRF, etc).

Execute strategy in external engagement and development

• Establish College's strategy in external engagement and development.

• Coordinate college level effort across different schools to execute the strategy.

• Partner the VPR Industry's office to align college external engagement strategy with NTU strategy and take advantage of opportunities to engage alongside other parts of the university with strategic stakeholders.

• Promote college's engagement internally and externally.

Provide strategic technical support to faculty on research proposals

• Provide high level advice and expertise on the development of research proposals.

• Identify and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders.

• Develop effective strategies to remedy variances from project plans, and minimize undesirable impacts.

Perform industry/technology/IP study

• Conduct literature search and technological scan to identify new and emerging industry and market trends.

• Collate and synthesize data to analyse the relevance and positioning of College in response to the opportunities in the funding landscape.

• Improve research capabilities including developing research and analytical tools and practices, and maintaining key data sources, to enable the College to respond quickly and effectively to strategic priorities.

• Leverage external contacts and knowledge to identify and apply external best practices.

Prepare research proposals with faculty

• Identify funding opportunities and complementary research interests among faculty and support Dean and Assoc Dean (Research) and Assistant Dean (International) to address multidisciplinary, interdepartmental funding and academic opportunities.

• Prepare scope and business cases for complex projects including cost and resource impacts.

• Lead in developing and preparing multi-investigator extramural funding proposals, including (business) writing, resource and budget recommendations, and timeline development.

Act as point of contact with external partners, agencies and companies.

• Cultivate and maintain relationship with current and prospective academic, governmental, regulatory and industry actors.

• Work closely with academic, government agencies and companies to facilitate the development of research projects or other collaborations.

• Serve as the liaison for the formation of interest groups and research teams, bridging external demands and opportunities with internal resources.

Lead in other strategic College-level proposals and communications

• Lead in other broad College's initiatives, proposals and other high-level communications to create an impactful outcome for the schools.

Job Requirement:

• Obtained PhD in the field of Science, Technology or Engineering from a recognized university.

• At least 10 years of experience in management position, preferably from the tertiary education industry or relevant research industries.

• Proven track record of close working experience with multiple government agencies and external (including international) partners.

• Experience in international research and research management in a higher education institution or National Research Institution will be an advantage.

• Experience in developing scientific reports and research business proposals.

• Ability to identify strategic needs and expectations (in terms of skillsets) and to match with students/graduates skillsets.

• A good team player with positive work attitude.

• Good presentation, interpersonal and project management skills.

• Deductive reasoning skills.

• Excellentcommand of written and spoken English.

• Interest in science and technology, and related development in the external partners.

We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.