Research Fellow In Epigenetics

About us This post will be based at the Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience at King’s College London within the Personalised Medicine team led by Dr Ahmad Al Khleifat. Our team currently include several staff and students and we have extensive experience in the development of genomic and bioinformatics tools and methods. We are part of the School of Neuroscience within the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN). The IoPPN is a leading centre for mental health and neuroscience research in Europe. It produces more highly cited outputs (top 1% citations) on psychiatry and mental health than any other centre (SciVal 2023), and on this metric has risen from 16th (2014) to 4th (2023) in the world for highly cited neuroscience outputs. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), 90% of research at the IoPPN was deemed ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’ (3* and 4*). More info about the IoPPN are available here www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/about. The postholder will work closely with Dr Alfredo Iacoangeli at the Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics, and Professor Ammar Al-Chalabi (Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience) in addition to collaborating with the members of King’s Motor Neurone Disease Care and Research Centre, The UK MND Institute, and large international consortia such as the EU JPND funded STRENGTH, and Project MinE consortia. About the role We are recruiting a highly motivated Epigeneticist to join a collaborative initiative between King’s College London and leading industry partner. This programme aims to identify and validate potential targets for treatments for Motor Neurone Disease (MND) through comprehensive genomic research. By analysing large-scale epigenetics datasets, our objective is to validate potential therapeutic targets and study their underlying mechanisms to accelerate the development of effective MND treatments. The successful candidates will join a team of neuroscientists and computational experts at the King’s MND Care and Research Centre, where they will have a leading role in developing computational analysis methods and analysing large-scale genome-wide DNA methylation and genetic datasets comprising over 10,000 samples. The post will be based within the Drug Discovery and Trials Optimisation team led by Dr Ahmad Al Khleifat at the Department Clinical Neuroscience also working closely with Dr Alfredo Iacoangeli at the Biostatistics and Health Informatics and Professor Ammar Al-Chalabi (Department Clinical Neuroscience). This is a full time, fixed term contract until 30th December 2025. About you To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience: Essential criteria PhD qualified in relevant subject area (or pending results), e.g. bioinformatics, life sciences, biotechnology, biophysics, etc UpToDate knowledge of NGS (DNA and RNA-seq) pipelines Programming in at least one language (Python, Java, Bash, Perl, R) Proficient in Unix based systems Publication records commensurate with grade Ability to work independently without direct supervision Excellent communication (written & verbal) skills Biomedical research experience Desirable criteria UpToDate knowledge of machine learning methods applied to clinical or omics data Experience in grant writing Experience in supervising staff and PhD students Downloading a copy of our Job Description Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, via the above ‘Apply’ button. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process. Closing date: 17th July 2024