Research Technician

About us

UCL Institute of Ophthalmology conducts cutting-edge research, attracting principal investigators, post-doctoral fellows and MD/PhD students of the highest
international calibre to a stimulating research environment. The Institute is committed to a multi-disciplinary research portfolio that furthers an understanding of the eye and visual system linked with clinical investigations targeted to specific problems in the prevention and treatment of eye disease.

In recognition of the Institute’s international standing, the most recent Research Excellence Framework confirmed the outstanding quality of research carried out at the Institute. The combination of the Institute’s research with the expertise and resources of Moorfields Eye Hospital, which has the largest ophthalmic patient population in the Western World, facilitates advances at the forefront of vision research and provides an unparalleled setting for research, education and training in ophthalmology. We were graded #1 place in the world to study ophthalmology (CWUR 2017 world rankings). There are 4 themes at IoO:

Development, Aging and Disease, Rescue, Repair and Regeneration, Visual Neuroscience and Function, Population and Data Science.

The Institute employs around 250 staff, has a budget of £25m and is located next to the City of London’s main financial district near Old Street Underground station, Shoreditch High Street and a short distance from Liverpool Street Rail station.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioo

About the role

We are looking to appoint a senior Research Technician at the Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, to join the MacDonald Laboratory. This role is to support a research project entitled “Establishing killifish as a novel model of age-related and adult-onset retinal disease” led by Dr. Nicole Noel, Research Fellow. This project is funded by Moorfields Eye Charity and will be based in the Institute of Ophthalmology at the University College London. This role will support a project with Dr. Noel in the laboratory to investigate disease pathologies in a new rapidly ageing model called the turquoise killifish.

The main duties of the post holder will be to provide lab managerial support for day-to-day laboratory duties, such as: killifish colony maintenance and planning, killifish husbandry, genome modification, retinal dissections for tissues collection to conduct -omics experiments, and histology. The post holder is expected to learn new techniques/skills on the job, have excellent organisational skills and will have the potential opportunity to run independent experiments.

About you

This post offers an exciting opportunity to join a research group led by Dr. Ryan MacDonald, focused on understanding the ageing and disease of the retina. The overarching research aim of our laboratory is to understand how a healthy eye is built and maintained throughout life. This project uses the killifish retina to approach longstanding problems in retinal neuroscience by studying age-related disease phenotypes in the rapidly ageing killifish.

The MacDonald lab studies age-related disease mechanisms in the rapidly ageing killifish. Dr. Nicole Noel studies how the light-sensitive photoreceptor cells and their essential support cells, the retinal pigment epithelium, become dysfunctional and deteriorate across ageing. We use genetic engineering (cloning, transgenesis, CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis), multiplex cellular labelling techniques (immunofluorescence, in situ), high resolution imaging (confocal, 2-photon, spinning disk), and computational analysis to explore fundamental aspects of retinal biology.

The MacDonald group consists of a diverse and including group of scientists with postdocs, PhD students and MSc students. For further information on the MacDonald lab group please see: http://zebrafishucl.org/macdonald-lab

Customer advert reference: B02-08252

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