Research Associate in Bioinformatics

Imperial College London National Heart and Lung Institute

Job summary

We are offering the exciting opportunity for an effective and innovative bioinformatician to work on two landmark longitudinal observational cohort studies of COVID-19 contacts known as “Assessment of Transmission And Contagiousness of COVID-19 Contacts (ATACCC)” and Integrated Network for Surveillance, Trial and Investigation into Covid-19 Transmission (INSTINCT) and being run by the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory...

Job listing information

  • Reference MED02255
  • Date posted 26 January 2021
  • Closing date 26 February 2021

Key information about the role

  • Location St Mary's Campus (map)
  • Position type Full time, fixed term
  • Salary £40,858 – £48,340 plus benefits
  • Department National Heart & Lung Institute
  • Category Researcher / Non Clinical Researcher

Job description

Job summary

We are offering the exciting opportunity for an effective and innovative bioinformatician to work on two landmark longitudinal observational cohort studies of COVID-19 contacts known as “Assessment of Transmission And Contagiousness of COVID-19 Contacts (ATACCC)” and Integrated Network for Surveillance, Trial and Investigation into Covid-19 Transmission (INSTINCT) and being run by the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory Infections, based at Imperial College London. This research is led by Professor Ajit Lalvani. The successful candidate will also be working alongside PHE colleagues on related respiratory infection research projects at Colindale, led by HPRU co-director Professor Maria Zambon. 

The National Institute for Health Research has awarded Imperial College London a further 5 years funding for the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Respiratory Infections https://www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/nihr-hpru-respiratory-infections. The NIHR HPRU in Respiratory Infections is a flagship partnership with Public Health England (PHE) conducting state of the art research to support public health services.  The mission of the NIHR HRPU in Respiratory Infections is to be a centre-of-excellence to design, conduct and share internationally leading multidisciplinary health protection research with our partner PHE.

Duties and responsibilities

    • Devise, manage and perform next-generation sequencing/deep sequencing techniques
    • To perform the advanced analysis of data
    • To integrate data-sets obtained from the various ‘omics approaches with clinical metadata
    • To ensure the validity and reliability of data at all times
    • To maintain accurate and complete records of all findings
    • To assist with the writing of reports to research sponsors
    • To present findings to colleagues
    • To provide advice and training to other staff and students
    • To assist with and contribute pro-actively to the publication of findings
    • To attend relevant workshops and conferences as necessary
    • To undertake training nationally or internationally at sites of excellence and expertise
    • To establish, maintain and foster collaborations, nationally and internationally
    • To develop contacts within the College and the wider community
    • To promote the reputation of the Group, the Department and the College

Essential requirements

    • Research Associate: Hold a PhD (or equivalent) in Epidemiology or medical statistics or a closely related discipline
    • Research Assistant: Near completion of a PhD (or equivalent) in Epidemiology or medical statistics or a closely related discipline
    • Evidence of ability to design and implement sequence analysis bioinformatics pipelines that take raw sequencing data as input (*accessible source code repositories (github.com etc) and peer reviewed papers or a PhD thesis)
    • Experience in big data analytics in host and/or pathogen
    • Experience in working with and parsing data from sequence databases locally or via NCBI, GISAID, SRA etc.

Further information

This is a full time, fixed term contract for 12 months with a possibility of extension based at the St. Mary's Campus.

Candidates who have not yet been officially awarded their PhD will be appointed as a Research Assistant within the salary range £36,045 - £39,183 per annum.

Prospective candidates should detail their potential start date in a covering letter. Given the circumstances of this project, suitable candidates with existing contracts and periods of notice are encouraged to discuss the potential for a shortened notice period with their current employer.

Should you require any further details on the role please contact: Samuel Evetts s.evetts@imperial.ac.uk

For technical issues when applying online please email recruitment@imperial.ac.uk

The College is a proud signatory to the San-Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which means that in hiring and promotion decisions, we evaluate applicants on the quality of their work, not the journal impact factor where it is published. For more information, see https://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-evaluation/

The College believes that the use of animals in research is vital to improve human and animal health and welfare. Animals may only be used in research programmes where their use is shown to be necessary for developing new treatments and making medical advances. Imperial is committed to ensuring that, in cases where this research is deemed essential, all animals in the College’s care are treated with full respect, and that all staff involved with this work show due consideration at every level.

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-integrity/animal-research/ 

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