Research Fellow

About us

The Department of Mathematics at UCL is an internationally renowned department within one of the world’s most prestigious universities. Since its beginning, mathematics at UCL has been enhanced by its many outstanding members of staff. Indeed, two of its students (and later staff) Professor Klaus Roth (1958) and Professor Alan Baker (1970) have gone on to win the Fields Medal. Another former member of staff, Professor Tim Gowers, won the Fields Medal in 1998 for the work he did whilst at UCL.

Since 2011, the department has grown considerably, with over 100 academic and honorary staff members, including fellows of the Royal Society. The department also has approximately 30 Postdoctoral Research Fellows, around 108 PhD students and 50 MSc students. We welcome a regular stream of distinguished visiting academics from home and abroad. The broad range of research interests is reflected in the wide choice of courses available in the third and fourth years of the degree programmes, from spectral theory, groups and geometry to fluid mechanics and from mathematical ideas in biology to cosmology. Research funding in the department from EPSRC, ERC, NERC, Leverhulme Trust and the Wellcome Trust has grown significantly in recent years, more than doubling since 2014.

The department has internationally recognised research groups in pure and applied analysis; fluid mechanics; mathematical physics; geometry and topology; algebra, number theory and combinatorics; mathematical modelling in biology, finance, industry and society. There are regular departmental seminar series in financial mathematics and applied mathematics, as well as seminar series joint with other London universities in number theory, geometry and analysis. There are regular London-Paris meetings in analysis and number theory and a London-Brussels meeting in geometry. The department hosts an annual meeting in the dynamics of rotating fluids.

About the role

Applications are invited for a full-time Research Fellow position to work with Shoham Letzter on the project Extremal problems about paths and cycles.

The responsibilities of the post will include carrying out vigorous, high-level research in the area extremal and probabilistic combinatorics, in collaboration with other team members, submitting publications regularly in referred journals, participating in local seminars and in national and international conferences. This post involves no compulsory teaching duties but will be offered the opportunity to take on teaching responsibilities.

This post is available from 21^st October 2025 or as soon as possible thereafter, for approx. 15.5 months in the first instance due to funding restrictions

About you

A successful candidate will have a PhD in mathematics (or will be in the final stages of obtaining one), with a proven publication record in combinatorics, and will have excellent interpersonal and communication skills.

An outstanding candidate will have a record of presenting their research in seminars, conferences and workshops, will have specialised in extremal and probabilistic combinatorics, and will have ideas for future research problems.

For full spectrum of duties and responsibilities as well as essential, and desired criteria please refer to the Further Particulars document attached to this advert.

If you have any queries regarding the vacancy or the application process, please contact Anna Rutherford ().

Informal enquiries may be addressed to Shoham Letzter, email:

We particularly welcome female applicants and those from an ethnic minority, as they are under-represented within UCL at this level.

Customer advert reference: B04-06002

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