Postdoctoral Research Associate or Fellow

This full-time role is immediately available until 31 December 2027 on a fixed-term basis.

We welcome applications from candidates interested in working part-time hours or job-sharing arrangements.

The post
The MRC Centre for Medical Mycology wishes to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Associate/Postdoctoral Research Fellow to participate in a newly-funded MRC Programme seeking to optimise combination antifungal therapy.

About the role
The MRC Centre for Medical Mycology (MRC CMM) wishes to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to participate in a newly-funded MRC Programme (Fungi-CARE) seeking to optimise combination antifungal therapy. The Fungi-CARE Programme (Combinations Against Resistance Emergence) led by Professor Elaine Bignell, brings together an alliance of three world leading centres (MRC CMM, St. George’s University Hospital London and the University of Liverpool) to tackle antifungal resistance via a consortium comprised of molecular mycologists, clinicians and pharmacologists.

Fungal diseases kill more than a million people annually. The new research programme will focus upon Candida species, which are found on and in the human body, and that can cause fatal infections usually in patients with weakened immunity or after surgery. There are very few antifungal drugs and Candida species are increasingly resistant to them, calling for urgent solutions.

Focusing on five key Candida pathogens, the overarching goals of this programme are to:

• Rationally select and develop optimised antifungal drug regimens, including combination therapies that are effective and suppress the emergence of clinical antifungal drug resistance.
• Establish pre-clinical and early clinical rationale and know-how for future phase II/ III trials of optimised antifungal therapy for candidemia.

About you
For the PDRA:
The successful applicant will be able to present information on research progress and outcomes, communicate complex information, orally, in writing and electronically and prepare proposals and applications to external bodies.

For the PDRF:
You will be a highly experienced medical mycologist with experience in the molecular genetic analysis of human fungal pathogens, ideally applied to the study of antifungal drug mode of action and resistance. You will have prior experience of molecular genetic manipulation of human fungal pathogens, including microbial genome sequencing and RNA-seq, genetic bar-coding of pathogen isolates and Nanostring-mediated transcript analysis. Additionally useful skills would be antifungal susceptibility testing, high throughput phenotypic screening, time-kill and population analysis profiling. You will also have prior experience of mammalian models of fungal infection.

Please ensure you read the Job Description and Person Specification (available on the university's website, accessed by the 'Apply' button) for full details of this role.

The University of Exeter
We are a member of the prestigious Russell Group of research-intensive universities and in the top 200 universities in the world (Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024 and QS World University Ranking 2024). We combine world-class teaching with world-class research, achieving a gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework Award 2023, underpinned by gold ratings for Student Experience and Student Outcomes.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Commitment
We are committed to ensuring reasonable adjustments are available for interviews and workplaces.

Whilst all applicants will be judged on merit alone, we particularly welcome applications from groups currently underrepresented within our working community.

Further information
For further information please contact Professor Elaine Bignell, e-mail E.Bignell@exeter.ac.uk.

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