EPSRC MediForge Hub: Drug Product Research Associate (672478)

FTE: 1 (35 hours/week)

Contract Type: Fixed Term (Until 30/09/2028) 

CMAC is a world leading medicines manufacturing research centre based in the Technology and Innovation Centre at the University of Strathclyde. The centre works closely with leading pharmaceutical companies to transform the way that medicines are developed and made and support research programmes to deliver our shared vision.

Applications are invited for a Platform Research Associate (Grade 7) to work in the EPSRC MediForge: Industry 5.0 Medicines Manufacturing Research Hub (www.cmac.ac.uk) being delivered by CMAC. The Hub comprises a multidisciplinary team of academics and researchers located across five leading UK Universities (Strathclyde, Leeds, Sheffield, Imperial College and Glasgow School of Art) providing a platform for collaborative research, training and knowledge exchange in advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing. The MediForge Hub was awarded under EPSRC’s Manufacturing Hubs for A Sustainable Future (Round 2) call and aims to develop a systems level approach for predictive design of sustainable, resilient and human-centric future medicines manufacturing covering multiple stages across drug substance and drug product processing. The CMAC Hub has a large and vibrant programme with key Industry partners including AZ, Chiesi, Lilly, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Takeda and UCB with a broad range of technology companies. The Hub also benefits from significant recent capital investments through our £33M UK RPIF Data Lab partnership creating a world class suite of advanced processing, automation, analysis, digital technologies and computational infrastructure to support MediForge research.

A key goal of Platform 1 is to deliver an integrated cyberphysical research infrastructure (CPRI) that connects comprehensive data generated from a suite of material sparing, self-driving DataFactory platforms for the target processing steps into a novel medicines manufacturing research data fabric. This will integrate with the end-to-end digital twin in Platform 2 to enable whole process design and optimisation for quality and sustainability. Designs will be evaluated from data generated by the MediForge MicroFactory Test Bed (Platform 3) spanning drug substance (synthesis, crystallisation, isolation) and drug product (feeding, blending, compaction) unit operations.

The Drug Product Research Associate post in Platform 1 reports to the Platform lead and will work closely with a multidisciplinary team of academics, PDRAs and PhDs. Within the multidisciplinary team this post will be principally responsible for delivering the material-sparing, high-throughput drug product development platforms that identify optimal process parameters and formulation for sustainable, resilient drug product processes. Working closely with the Automation Research Fellow, this post will integrate drug product process, characterisation and analytical techniques (e.g. HPLC) and product testing operations (e.g. fully automated dissolution testing, stability testing), optimisation frameworks and drug product models to develop predictive systems. The post holder will be responsible for undertaking original experimental research, reporting on project progress and the preparation and submission of research papers arising from these and related studies in the group.

The successful candidate will have a PhD in a relevant subject (chemical engineering, materials science, physics, pharmaceutical science, chemistry or a related discipline) with appropriate experience in drug product manufacturing and modelling. Familiarity with basic data science principles will also be beneficial however training will be provided.

Informal enquiries about the post can be directed to Professor Daniel Markl, Platform 1 Lead (daniel.markl@strath.ac.uk). 

Formal interviews for this post will be held in January 2025.

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