14 Postdoctoral Fellowship at King’s College London, United Kingdom

An exciting new opportunity has opened in the Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences for two Post-Doctoral Research Associates to lead on a line of research to identify physiological indices (e.g., autonomic function, attention, arousal) associated with variation in developmental trajectories of mental health. This work will lead to developments in our understanding of the role of biological markers of chronic stress/allostatic load on longitudinal patterns of mental health features. 

The post holder(s) will work with secondary physiological time series data (i.e., eye-tracking, heart rate, skin conductance, and related indices) from very large (>2,500 individuals) longitudinal European and/or South African cohorts that span from the preschool age range into middle adulthood, also working collaboratively with colleagues to integrate this with available data from other modalities.

The successful candidate(s) will join a world class academic team of experts in neurodevelopment, who are situated in international networks (e.g., http://aims-2-trials.eu**;** candy-project.eu**;** https://www.r2d2-mh.eu/), and further contribute to supporting other researchers and PhD students, and publishing high-quality papers in peer-reviewed literature. 

The successful candidate will:

• Lead and perform high-level statistical and genetic analyses, including GWAS, polygenic risk scoring, cognitive data analysis, and integration with EHR data 
• Work closely with collaborators at QMUL (particularly Prof Sarah Finer), NHS Trusts, and internationally 
• Contribute to hypothesis generation, statistical study design, and quality control pipelines 
• Support dissemination of research through publication in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at conferences 
• Provide supervision and training to junior staff, PhD students, and interns as needed 
• Take responsibility for data management, reproducibility standards (GitHub, RMarkdown, OSF), and adherence to data governance policies 
• Contribute to ethics submissions, PPIE events, and community research planning 

The School of Education, Communication and Society (ECS) at King’s College London invites applications for a ten-month Postdoctoral Research Fellowship within the Global Observatory on Academic Freedom project (GOAF).

GOAF is a research endeavour launched in 2020 focusing on the study of contemporary understandings and practices of academic freedom across various jurisdictions, higher education systems and institutions. A key aspiration of GOAF is to produce research that supports the development of conceptual reference points and practical guidelines for academic freedom that are better adapted to the present times and challenges in this area. For this, GOAF engages with academic communities and other relevant stakeholders to both reimagine the concept and strengthen effective practices of academic freedom that transcend yet have utility in diverse academic, regulatory and social-political contexts.

We are looking for a highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher to join Dr Andrada Ianus at the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King’s College London, working in close collaboration with Dr. Po-Wah So at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience. You will join a dynamic multi-disciplinary team with access to cutting-edge imaging facilities and world-renowned expertise. You will work on an ERC Starting Grant funded project to deliver novel MRI approaches to image the liver and enable the detection and characterisation of micrometastases.

The overarching aim of this project is to enable the detection and mapping of liver micrometastases development in cancer, based on a novel MRI approach which combines multi-dimensional diffusion-relaxometry acquisitions, efficient data denoising and biophysical modelling of the tissue microstructure.

In this position, you will work on developing advanced preclinical MRI techniques and you will employ them for 1) in-vivo mouse liver imaging, both for normal controls and in models of liver metastases and 2) ex-vivo MRI of human liver tissue specimens. You will be responsible for the sequence implementation, data acquisition and analysis, including biophysical models of liver tissue, as well as liaising with the Liver Biobank at King’s College Hospital in the Denmark Hill for the work related to tissue samples. The experimental part of this work will be based at the James Black Centre in the Denmark Hill Campus.

Candida albicans is usually a commensal organism of mucosal surfaces but under suitably predisposing conditions can cause severe morbidity and life-threatening infections. C. albicans possesses several virulence factors that promote disease including the ability to form hyphae and secrete the toxin candidalysin. However, the regulatory factors that control the yeast-hypha transition and direct pathogenic and commensal mechanisms are unclear. A Research Associate will employ molecular, protein, cellular, immunological and ‘omic’ technologies to investigate the yeast-hypha transition*,* candidalysin gene (ECE1) regulation, and the host response against pathogenic and commensal strains of C. albicans in vivo. They will be funded by the BBSRC and based in the laboratories of Professor Julian Naglik and Dr Jonathan Richardson at King’s College London, where they will produce independent, original research within the group.

This post will work on the genetic epidemiology of back pain, intervertebral disc degeneration and hearing loss, supporting the research activities of Prof Frances Williams (PI, Dept of Twin Research, School of Life Course Sciences). We are increasingly moving to multi-omic analysis of microbiome and metabolites to understand their relationship with chronic complex traits. The use of two sample Mendelian randomisation is allowing us to truly define the risk factors which cause common complex conditions, and how they interact with host genetics.

There will have a unique opportunity to work on data from important cohorts including TwinsUK and UK Biobank.  The applicant should be familiar with all aspects of genetic epidemiology including heritability studies, GWAS and multi-omic modelling.

There will also be opportunities to engage in other projects using deeply phenotyped cohorts, as well as with other projects involving genomics research and age-related diseases, in particular chronic pain and age-related hearing loss.

This is an outstanding development opportunity for a talented individual who wishes to advance excellent and innovative research on the care and support of young people with life limiting conditions and their families.

This research post will be working with our Chair of Palliative Care and Child Health, Lorna Fraser on an NIHR funded programme – HOPSCOTCH Helping Optimise Primary Care Support During Transition From Children’s Hospice Care. HOPSCOTCH is led by Prof Lucy Ziegler and Dr Sarah Mitchell from the University of Leeds.

The post holder will be responsible for protocol development, study setup activities (i.e. obtaining ethical approval) and conducting data  collection, for the feasibility part of this programme . They will conduct the following tasks; recruit for and conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with young people with life-limiting conditions and their parents and health, social care and education professionals;  design quantitative feasibility measures; undertake quantitative and qualitative data analysis; write for publication; disseminate findings.

Expertise, knowledge, and experience of young people with life-limiting conditions,  complex medical or palliative care  needs are necessary, and mixed methods research experience is essential. Enthusiasm in developing a career in palliative care or child health research will be beneficial and we are a supportive team that can assist with developing future grants and fellowship applications

An opportunity to join a multidisciplinary Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital Charity funded study investigating mechanisms, risk factors and response to treatment of Long COVID symptoms, in the context of a randomised controlled trial of a novel psychophysiological intervention called Balance-ACT.

You will be responsible for performing a suite of physiological outcome measures designed to understand fatigue, breathlessness and physical activity in people with Long COVID symptoms who have been recruited to the Balance-ACT clinical trial. These physiological outcome measures will include lung function testing, tests of exercise capacity, muscle strength and fatiguability, and analysis of heart rate variability from ECG signals. The post holder will be responsible for day to day running of the physiological testing, physiological data analysis and will assist with recruitment and consenting of study participants. It is expected that the post holder will have some prior practical experience of human physiological testing, but the post-holder will receive comprehensive training in all aspects relevant to the Balance-ACT study including testing of cardiorespiratory and muscle function.

You will be a highly motivated scientist who is passionate about science and has a background in neurodegeneration and/or proteostasis research. You will lead a project to explore the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which extracellular chaperones exert protective functions in Alzheimer’s disease.

We are looking for someone with cell biology and mouse in vivo expertise in the context of neurodegeneration. The project involves working with cellular models of tau pathology, including murine primary glial/neuronal cultures and/or iPSC-derived cells to explore disease mechanisms. In addition, we will use tauopathy mouse models to explore AAV-mediated strategies to rescue neuronal degeneration, cognitive and motor deficits. Expertise in both cellular and mouse models is preferably, but strong candidates with very extensive expertise in one of them and willingness to learn the other will also be considered. 

The project also involves working with human post-mortem Alzheimer’s disease brain samples. We expect you will have a large degree of independence and will make major practical and intellectual contributions to the project and to the general scientific discussions in the team. We are looking for someone to contribute to a highly cooperative environment. Time management skills and the ability to work with others, as well as to train and supervise students in the lab are required.

This is an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic researcher to develop state-of-the-art methodologies and quantification for super-resolution ultrasound imaging (SRUS) in 2D and 3D. This will require experiences in data acquisition and processing related to ultrasound imaging and contrast enhanced ultrasound. This aims to provide a reliable and repeatable clinical technique to extract quantitative microvascular information.

The purpose of the role is to design, develop, and perform experiments and to develop associated processing strategies for SRUS imaging. The PDRA will work closely with the Fellow on the project’s experimental and data acquisition aspects. This will involve designing, developing and performing experimental systems and acquisition protocols. The RA will assist with data curation and implementation of processing software. This will require computational skills, good knowledge of programming languages such as MATLAB, and an ability to plan experiments, make and record observations and test hypotheses. The candidate will propose and define strategies for extending the imaging strategies with a research system and programmable 2D matrix-array probe to allow 3D SRUS imaging. 

Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research position in the field of quantum privacy. We seek highly talented and motivated researchers to join the exciting quantum networks integration project within the platform driving the ultimate connectivity (TITAN) research hub funded by the EPSRC.

The successful candidate will work on advanced topics on quantum distributed computing and its application to communication-efficient private information retrieval. The successful candidate will have an extensive research foundation and expertise in quantum information science, quantum computing and coding.

We are looking for a Research Associate to join Professor Rachel Tribe’s Preterm Birth research group in the Department of Women and Children’s Health at St Thomas’ Campus, King’s College London. This project is in collaboration with researchers based at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.

This post will be focused on investigating a novel cell-based treatment strategy for preterm birth. We are looking for someone that has a background in animal research and that has experience in immunology. The postholder will be involved in testing this treatment in different murine models of preterm birth. You will be expected to engage in lab activities (lab meetings, general lab housekeeping), conduct and analyse experiments, keep up to date with scientific literature in the field, lead your project, write manuscripts, present at national and international conferences and collaborate with others. You will also be expected to help co-supervise students. We are looking for someone that can be independent as well as engaged in our group and participate in our discussions.