Post Doctoral Research Associate Proactive vaccinology SARS CoV 2

About the role:

We have an exciting opportunity for a Research Associate with experience in bioinformatics to join the Barclay Lab at Imperial College London, studying how vaccine responses shape the antigenic evolution of viruses. Vaccination remains one of the most powerful tools to protect people from viruses. Unfortunately, viruses such as Influenza and SARS-CoV-2 evolve under the pressure of antigenic selection to variants that escape the protection of vaccines. The lag in vaccine development and deployment means that at the time of vaccine administration or soon after, variants that are not protected by the vaccine have emerged reducing the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Our goal is to understand the drivers of antigenic evolution of SARS-CoV-2, develop methods of predicting the direction of antigenic evolution and develop proactive vaccines designed to provide protection against the future variants that may emerge.

What you would be doing:

The primary role of this post will be in the development of computational methods to support the analysis of the deep mutagenesis sequencing platforms of the project which aim to understand how mutations in SARS-CoV-2 spike affect antigenic escape, stability and function. This will involve establishing improved methods for analysis, including the utilisation of other published data. This post will also introduce computational methods for spike protein forward evolution, especially those that involve large language models (LLMs).

The successful candidate will have the opportunity to develop their own pipelines for the analysis of sequence data from multiple sources and their own computational models to explore SARS-CoV-2 spike evolution.

More information on the Barclay lab research interests and activities can be found here:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/barclay-lab/

What we are looking for:

• The candidate should have a PhD or expected to have completed a PhD at the time of appointment in a relevant field.
• Experience in a dealing with large next generation sequence (NGS) datasets
• Experience with linking sequence datasets to other scientific information
• Knowledge of different computational approaches and statistical procedures.

What we can offer you:

• The opportunity to continue your career at a world-leading institution and be part of our mission to continue science for humanity.
• Grow your career: Gain access to Imperial’s sector-leading dedicated career support for researchers as well as opportunities for promotion and progression
• Sector-leading salary and remuneration package (including 39 days off a year and generous pension schemes).

Further Information

This is a full time, fixed term position based at the South Kensington Campus. Funding for this position is available for 32 months.

Applicants will need to complete an online application. Please also see the Job description for further details.

Informal enquiries regarding the vacancy can be made by email to Professor Paul Kellam: p.kellam@imperial.ac.uk

For technical issues when applying online please email sjobs@ic.ac.uk                                                           

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