Location: | London |
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Salary: | £41,123 to £48,078 per annum. |
Hours: | Full Time |
Contract Type: | Fixed-Term/Contract |
Placed On: | 16th October 2024 |
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Closes: | 30th October 2024 |
Job Ref: | 3952 |
About the Role
Applicants are invited to join an exciting transdisciplinary team of clinicians, scientists and bioengineers working together at Queen Mary across the School of Engineering and Materials Science, Blizard Institute and the Zvitambo Institute for Maternal and Child Health Research in Zimbabwe.
This project is funded by Wellcome and led by Prof Andrew Prendergast who is the Director of the Zvitambo Institute for Maternal and Child Health Research in Zimbabwe and has established clinical trials to improve healthy birth and growth. You will work under the supervision of Dr Tina Chowdhury at the Centre for Bioengineering, who has identified inflammatory pathways that are common in preterm birth (https://www.sems.qmul.ac.uk/staff/t.t.chowdhury).
Our goal is to better understand the pathogenesis of preterm birth which affects 13.4 million babies each year, making it the leading cause of death amongst children under five years old. In this project, you will investigate the interactions of how heat stress activates inflammatory mechanisms during pregnancy leading to preterm birth. Zimbabwe has one of the highest global preterm birth rates (32/1000 live births). Currently, there is a paucity of clinical interventions to prevent preterm birth in rural Zimbabwe.
This project will utilize a human in vitro model representing the maternal-foetal interface to investigate the effects of heat stress on inflammatory mechanisms. You will evaluate the interactions using clinical biomarkers identified during pregnancy from women who live in Zimbabwe to discover whether heat amplifies inflammation leading to rupture and preterm birth.
About You
The candidate will be an experienced biomedical scientist with publications in infection, inflammation and diseases related to women’s health research. Techniques used in the project include multiphoton imaging and cell/molecular approaches to investigate inflammatory mechanisms in human placenta and membranes.
About the School/Department/Institute/Project
This post is within the School of Engineering and Materials Science, a large School with over 100 academics and 100 postdoctoral research staff. There are around 2600 undergraduate and taught postgraduate students and 250 PhD students. These are supported by an administrative and technical staff team of 60. The staff and student body are international in make-up.
About Queen Mary
At Queen Mary University of London, we believe that a diversity of ideas helps us achieve the previously unthinkable.
Throughout our history, we’ve fostered social justice and improved lives through academic excellence. And we continue to live and breathe this spirit today, not because it’s simply ‘the right thing to do’ but for what it helps us achieve and the intellectual brilliance it delivers.
We continue to embrace diversity of thought and opinion in everything we do, in the belief that when views collide, disciplines interact, and perspectives intersect, truly original thought takes form.
Benefits
We offer competitive salaries, access to a generous pension scheme, 30 days’ leave per annum (pro-rata for part-time/fixed-term), a season ticket loan scheme and access to a comprehensive range of personal and professional development opportunities. In addition, we offer a range of work life balance and family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, and campus facilities.
Queen Mary’s commitment to our diverse and inclusive community is embedded in our appointments processes. Reasonable adjustments will be made at each stage of the recruitment process for any candidate with a disability. We are open to considering applications from candidates wishing to work flexibly.
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