Technical Liaison Officer

Reports to job title: Facilities Lead

Location: CABI

Contract: Maternity Leave Cover to March 2025

About Us

The UK Agri-Tech Centre is a new organisation launched on 1 April 2024 and created from three of the original Agri-Tech centres.

Utilising our UK-wide assets, world-class facilities and expertise, our new organisation is a gateway for funding programmes, such as the Farming Innovation Programme and Horizon Europe, and provides benefits to the whole supply chain, the UK economy and beyond.

We offer a complete life cycle of support, driving Agri-Tech innovation and adoption through world-class facilities, expert knowledge and business support accelerating progress.

We strengthen the connections between science, business, and funders to accelerate research and development tackling the industry’s most critical challenges such as climate change, labour availability, disease mitigation and environmental sustainability.

Job Purpose

The key function of this role is to support UK Agri-Tech Centre partner organisation (CABI) at its Microbiological and Molecular laboratories in Egham. The successful applicant will join a team of specialists and support staff involved in the identification, testing, characterisation and preservation of microorganisms.

Specific responsibilities will evolve as the research outcomes are evaluated and you will have the opportunity to shape this as a critical member of the team.

Main Duties

The principal duties within the role will be to provide technical support across the UK Agri-Tech Centre’s capabilities located at CABI and to act as a liaison between the UK Agri-Tech Centre and CABI, for operational reporting and knowledge exchange purposes. Specific responsibilities are expected to be diverse.

The technical role will deliver support to culture sales and deposits relating to the UK Agri-Tech Centre’s National Reference Collection of Crop Pests through the web portal and involve extraction, culturing, sub-culturing and cryopreservation in liquid nitrogen. It will also incorporate isolation and screening of potential biopesticides.  Finally, support will be given to the Horizon Scanning capability by processing content for the factsheet app, analysis of the use of the data/content/apps and generating blog content.

Site Specific Responsibilities:

• Collation and submission of monthly UK Agri-Tech Centre progress reports
• Generation of co-authored media content relating to the UK Agri-Tech Centre assets at CABI
• Isolation and purification of microorganisms, predominantly fungi, bacteria and yeasts and their despatch or deposit in liquid nitrogen
• Support to the plant clinic/horizon scanning team’s knowledge products
• Support plant clinic image analysis
• Other technical activities to be undertaken for delivery into CABI’s UK Agri-Tech Centre work-flow or projects, as required by UK Agri-Tech Centre
• Liaise with partners on molecular diagnostics projects
• Content development

Skills and Qualifications

• Degree or equivalent in Biological Sciences (required)
• Competence in the MS Office suite of software (required)
• Experience with practical research projects (desirable)
• Skilled in microbiology procedures including aseptic techniques, sub-culturing, and use of microscopes (required)
• Good oral and written communication skills (required)
• Experience of working within a ISO/IEC 17025:2017(E) accredited laboratory (desirable)
• Experience of a LIMS (desirable)
• Good communication skills, written and verbal.
• Collaborative approach, compliment the work of all stakeholders
• Ability to work as part of a team
• Self-motivated and able to work with little supervision
• Able to effectively prioritise
• Good organisational skills and ability to manage large workloads effectively and to deadlines
• Flexibility & adaptability
• Problem solving skills
• Continuous improvement

Application Process

Please submit a CV to Hannah.Wallace@agri-epicentre.com via the ‘Apply’ button above.

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