Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Fixed term contract - 18 months

Full time - 35 hours per week

An exciting opportunity for an ambitious post-doctoral research fellow to join the research team of Prof Siddharthan Chandran – Director, UK Dementia Research Institute (UK-DRI), Prof Neil Carragher (Chair of Drug Discovery, Edinburgh) and Dr. Bhuvaneish Selvaraj (UK-DRI, Edinburgh) to work across motor neuron disease (MND) modelling and drug discovery using state of the art human experimental platforms.

The Opportunity:

Neurodegenerative diseases especially MND are at a tipping point in terms of identification of high-value targets and therapeutic development through to definitive testing in clinical trials. This reflects advances in our understanding of the biology on MND driven in part by major genetic and pathological discoveries. The post-holder will join a team that is building on these insights with state of the art disruptive technologies [human stem cell disease modelling, high throughput phenotypic drug discovery] and innovation in clinical trial design (see MND-SMART – a pioneering platform trial led by Chandran).

The post holder will investigate cellular autonomy in motor neurons and the role of glial cells in modulating motor neuron function in MND using various patient derived 2D human stem cell models. This project will also involve in testing high value candidate drugs that emerge from ongoing high-throughput drug discovery projects at University of Edinburgh. The post holder will closely interact with a multidisciplinary team of translational neuroscientists, MND clinicians, drug discovery experts to fast-track therapeutics to MND-SMART clinical trial.

The post holder will conduct original research and produce data for high quality publications, grant proposals and dissemination to the public.

This post is ideally serves as a springboard for those motivated to pursue for independent career fellowships or industry career in future.

Your skills and attributes for success:

• PhD in developmental or molecular or translational neuroscience
• Expertise in relevant approaches and models, analytical techniques and methods
• Experience in writing and publishing research papers in high-quality journals

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