Research Associate in Bioinformatics

About us:

This post will be based at the Department of Biostatistics & Health Informatics at King’s College London within the Bioinformatics team led by

Dr Alfredo Iacoangeli. Our team currently include several staff and students and we have extensive experience in the development of genomic bioinformatics tools and methods (https://github.com/KHP-Informatics/). We are part of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN).

The IoPPN is a leading centre for mental health and neuroscience research in Europe. It produces more highly cited outputs (top 1% citations) on psychiatry and mental health than any other centre (SciVal 2023), and on this metric has risen from 16th (2014) to 4th (2023) in the world for highly cited neuroscience outputs. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), 90% of research at the IoPPN was deemed ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’ (3* and 4*). More info about the IoPPN are available here https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/about.

The postholder will also be expected to build upon current collaborations with the other members of the King’s MND centre based at the Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience, in addition to collaborating with the members of large international consortia such as the EU JPND funded STRENGTH, Brain-MEND and Project MinE consortia.

About the role:

We are recruiting two highly motivated Postdoctoral Bioinformaticians to join King’s College London in a new collaborative research programme. This programme aims to identify and validate potential targets for treatments for Motor Neurone Disease (MND) through comprehensive genomic research. By analysing large-scale multi-omics datasets, our objective is to identify potential therapeutic targets and study their underlying mechanisms to accelerate the development of effective MND treatments.

The successful candidates will join a team of neuroscientists and computational experts at the King’s MND Care and Research Centre, where they will have a leading role in developing computational analysis methods and analysing large-scale multi-omics datasets comprising thousands of samples. These posts will be based within Dr Iacoangeli’s bioinformatics team at the Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics but given the collaborative and multi-disciplinary nature of the programme, the expectation is that they will work closely with Dr Ahmad Al Khleifat and the other members of the King’s MND Care and Research Centre.

This is a full time post and you will be offered an a fixed term contract until 30/4/2026.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

• PhD qualified in relevant subject area (or pending results), e.g. bioinformatics, life sciences, biotechnology, biophysics, etc
• UpToDate knowledge of NGS (DNA and RNA-seq) pipelines 
• Programming in at least one language (Python, Java, Bash, Perl, R) 
• Proficient in Unix based systems 
• Publication records commensurate with grade 
• Ability to work independently without direct supervision 
• Excellent communication (written & verbal) skills 
• Biomedical research experience

Desirable criteria

• UpToDate knowledge of machine learning methods applied to clinical or omics data 
• Research experience in Neuroscience 
• Experience in grant writing 
• Experience in supervising staff and PhD students 

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, via the above ‘Apply’ button. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Closing date: 23^rd June 2024

Advert information