Research Associate – Data Science

Job description
Job summary

An exciting opportunity has arisen for the appointment of two Data Science Research Associate’s to join the National Phenome Centre (NPC), a world leader in Metabolomics based at Imperial College London. The Centre undertakes metabolic phenotyping from a diverse portfolio of research collaborations spanning clinical medicine (including COVID-19) to large-scale population health studies from within Imperial and beyond. With a key focus on building strong research collaborations, identifying biologically and clinically relevant biomarkers, and developing innovative technological and bioinformatics approaches required for the analysis of “big data”, this is an exciting role within a highly motivated and supportive team.

The Centre, in operation since June 2012 (previously as the National Phenome and Clinical Phenotyping Centres), provides high-throughput, high-quality analysis of samples and engages in academic and industrial collaborations for projects requiring complex data analysis and interpretation across a wide range of research areas. It is a national resource to enable researchers (academic and commercial) to have access to state-of-the-art NMR and Mass Spectrometry facilities and expertise at Imperial to undertake this work. The Centre specialises in both the untargeted and targeted measurement of biochemicals in human biofluids (https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/61ebd6fa0716a8529e3823dc ), and in the development of cutting-edge, open-source computational tools for the pre-processing, quality control, analysis, and metabolite identification of metabolomics data (https://github.com/phenomecentre ).

Duties and responsibilities

Working as part of a team, you will support studies from start to finish, from the initial review of study design with collaborators, through data pre-processing and quality-control, to the final statistical, bioinformatic, and interpretive analysis of the resulting analytical data. You will work closely with colleagues and collaborators to deliver impactful and timely research outcomes. In addition, you will support the development of the Centre’s informatic infrastructure, working with the informatics team to maintain and develop novel informatics tools to aid the identification of metabolites, perform cross-project meta-analyses, and streamline the informatics data-analysis pipelines of the NPC. One post will have a larger focus on mass spectrometry imaging projects, the other will have a larger focus on the profiling mass spectrometry and NMR data sets, but both posts will have the opportunity to develop capabilities in all areas of NPC capability.

Essential requirements

• Research Associate: Hold a PhD in Bioinformatics, Chemometrics, or a closely related discipline, or equivalent research, industrial or commercial experience
• Research Assistant: Near completion of a PhD in Bioinformatics, Chemometrics, or a closely related discipline, or equivalent research, industrial or commercial experience

*Candidates who have not yet been officially awarded their PhD will be appointed as Research Assistant.

• A strong theoretical grasp of data analysis related to NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry metabolomics, alongside a practical knowledge of the current state-of-the-art software tools employed in these fields.
• Proven coding skills in Python, R, or equivalent.
• Excellent communication skills.
• The ability to work to deadlines whilst maintaining a high level of accuracy.
• Above all, a problem-solving mindset, excellent team working skills and a willingness to learn are more important than knowledge or experience of particular languages or technologies.

Further information

This post is full time and fixed term. You will be based at Hammersmith Campus (East Acton) with options for remote working and travel as necessary to other Imperial College campuses.

For further details please contact Lynn Maslen at L.Maslen@imperial.ac.uk .

Candidates who have not yet been officially awarded their PhD will be appointed as a Research Assistant within the salary range £38,194 – £41,388 per annum.

The College is currently trialling a Work Location Framework until early 2023.  Hybrid working may be considered for this role and the role holder may be expected to work 60% or more of their time onsite, with 40% the minimum time spent onsite.  The opportunity for hybrid working will be discussed at interview.

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 / 

Documents