Research Associate (Fixed Term)

The Digital Mental Health Group at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit is an innovative and collaborative research group studying the intersection between adolescent mental health, cognitive neuroscience, and digital technologies with the aim of improving mental health outcomes in both non-clinical and clinical populations. We are based at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, a world-leading research centre well-known for its close-knit community, collaborative atmosphere, and outstanding research support.

We are seeking a post-doctoral research associate who enjoys analysing large datasets and solving statistical problems to join us for two years. In this post, you will be responsible for using pre-existing datasets to study how development and individual differences influence the impact of social media use and other digital technologies on adolescent mental health.

This role will provide you with the freedom to develop new and creative ideas, methodologies, and/or approaches to challenging and societally important questions. You will also collaborate with group members on developing projects and analysing newly collected datasets, which could include data collected from digital devices and/or services through data donation or collaboration with service providers. You will be supported in complementing your core research activities in ways that interest you and benefit the group, as well as the wider department and academic community: for example, by collaborating or engaging with policy, charity, or stakeholder organisations; by developing or maintaining open-source and/or community resources; by advocating for improved research practices; and/or by helping supervise and teach students. We welcome applications from those wishing to work part-time.

The ideal candidate will have extensive expertise in advanced statistical techniques to analyse longitudinal questionnaire and cohort data studying social media use and adolescent mental health. It is important for you to have a track record of implementing challenging analyses, overcoming statistical problems, considering causality, producing high-quality visualisations and outputs, and independently delivering reproducible analysis scripts in this area. We would also like you to have experience working directly with stakeholders in shaping your research, outputs or communication. For the complete essential and desirable criteria, please see the job specification provided as part of the application pack.

If you have any informal enquiries please feel free to contact Dr Amy Orben: amy.orben@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 2 years in the first instance.

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