Research Associate in Additive Manufacturing

About us

Dr Alhnan research team is an interdisciplinary team dedicated to applying the latest advances in material science and electronics in the pharmaceutical field to produce innovative manufacturing of pharmaceutical medicines and medical devices. The research enabled new dosage form concepts, innovative diagnostic devices, and the manufacturing of transdermal patches. The group’s fundamental research has led to several world firsts: first example of using pharmaceutical grade polymers in FDM 3D printing (WO2017072536A1), first 3D printed tablets to meet the US and British Pharmacopoeias (BP) for delayed release products, and first examples of 3D printing of liquid-filled capsules (WO2018020237A1). Dr Alhnan team introduced and patented the innovative concept of tablets of complex architecture as a solution for fast disintegration and dissolution (WO2017072536A1). The group invented a novel approach for manufacturing via extrusion under low temperatures (WO2016038356A1). The group received >£2.5M from industry and research councils including EPSRC and Innovate UK. The team published >25 peer-reviewed articles and 6 patent applications that covered inventions applying 3D printing in the pharmaceutical field.

About the school

The group is based in the School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences. The school have > 80 Principal Investigators and 200 PhD students located across King's Guy’s, Denmark Hill and Waterloo campuses. Our academic excellence is widely recognised: we are ranked 14th in the world for Pharmacy and Pharmacology (2019 QS subject rankings) and first in the UK for Clinical Medicine in terms of the proportion of King’s overall submission that was ranked 4* or 3* (REF2014).

About the role

We are looking for an enthusiastic Research Associate to join a highly collaborative research team to work on a highly applied project that aims to self-learning AI-copilots. The project is funded by Innovate UK to enable personalised medicine manufacturing. This project seeks to develop a data-efficient vision-based AI process monitoring system to seamlessly assure additive manufacturing (AM) part quality in real-time, thereby accelerating AM adoption including in personalised pharmaceuticals. This is a highly collaborative project that seeks to advance AI-powered Quality Assurance while fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, King’s Collage London and an AI-specialised enterprise.

The candidate should have a strong background in computer-aided design, additive manufacturing, formulation and development of pharmaceutical dosage form, particularly solid dosage forms. The research fellow will carry out experimental research that involves CAD, additive manufacturing, solid dosage forms, quality control, data management and handling large datasets.

This is a full time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract until 31st July 2026.

About you

Essential criteria 

• PhD qualified in pharmaceutical sciences (or pending results), or 5-year experience in pharmaceutical research
• Research experience in pharmaceutical sciences or additive manufacturing.
• Practical experience of formulation development, quality control of solid dosage forms or pharmaceutical analysis.
• Highly organised, self-motivated, ability to work independently as well as part of a team, ability to work to deadlines and prioritise competing workloads, flexible and able to meet tight deadlines, ability to manage and support other staff.
• Demonstrate a strong interest in interdisciplinary research.

Desirable criteria

• Familiarity with statistical and/or machine learning methods for pharmaceutical research.
• Familiarity with image preprocessing and generative AI tools
• Expertise in pharmaceutical additive manufacturing/3D printing.

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