Postdoctoral Project Research Scientist (PPRS)

Location: The Francis Crick Institute, London

Contract: 2 yr FTC/full time

Salary: From £45,500 pa with benefits, dependent on skills and experience

About us…  

The Francis Crick Institute is Europe’s largest biomedical research institute under one roof. Our world-class scientists and staff collaborate on vital research to help prevent, diagnose and treat illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, infectious diseases and neurodegenerative conditions. 

To learn more about the Crick, click here.

About the role… 

The Miguel-Aliaga lab seeks to understand how organs sense and react to their environment to maintain or change our physiology. They focus on the study of the intestinal tract.

Following previous work on the role that the shape of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract plays in health and disease in the fruit fly, we are now moving into analysis of human GI tract shape. We have adapted our methods to analyse GI tract shape in abdominal MRI scans. We have an approved project to work with the data of the UK Biobank – a biomedical database of volunteers from across the UK. This includes genetic data and whole-body MRI scans for 100,000 participants. We aim to investigate whether in humans, there is an underlying logic to GI tract shape and 3D organ arrangement which might vary in males and females, post-pregnancy and in disease such as Crohn’s disease.  

We are looking for an ambitious and experienced image analyst for this computational post to develop AI-based image analysis methods to extract GI tract shape data from whole-body MRI scans. 

To learn more about team/Group Leader and projects currently being undertaken here. 

What you will be doing… 

As a PPRS at the Crick, you will be: 

• Developing image analysis tools for analysis of GI tract shape and volume from MRI scans 
• Developing a neural network for the automation of segmentation of the GI tract from UK Biobank whole-body MRI scans 
• Liaising with other lab members and collaborators to link analysis of GI tract shape features with other phenotype data and genetics in the UK Biobank 

About you…  

The essential criteria you will bring… 

• PhD in Developmental Biology, Cell Biology, Computational Biology or in the final stages of PhD submission
• Strong level of competence and experience of the use of deep learning for image analysis in large datasets, particularly image segmentation
• Strong level of competence in writing macros for ImageJ/FIJI and use of other languages such as R and Python for image analysis
• Experience of working with large 3D datasets such as MRI scans or microCT scans
• Experience of image segmentation

For the complete job description, click here.  

About Working at the Crick… 

Our values  

• We are bold.
• We are open.
• We are collegial.

At the Crick we believe that diversity and inclusion are essential to driving innovation and scientific discovery.

We are a Disability Confident employer. Please contact people@crick.ac.uk for assistance.

Read more about our EDI approach here.  

What will you receive?  

We value our team members and offer an extensive range of benefits to support their well-being and development. You can find out more here.

To apply, please click on the ‘Apply’ button above.

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