Research Associate (Fixed Term)

Full Time, 2 years fixed term contract(August 2025 to August 2027

We are seeking a highly motivated Research Associate to join an ambitious, Wellcome-funded research programme at the intersection of developmental immunology, psychiatry and functional genomics. This is a rare opportunity to help drive a transformative effort to unravel how genetic and immune risk factors interact across development to influence the brain, behaviour, and psychiatric outcomes, with a particular focus on anxiety and depression.

You will be based in the Lynall Lab (PI: Dr Mary-Ellen Lynall) at the University of Cambridge and work closely with the interdisciplinary Anxiomics team led by Prof Duncan Astle. This vibrant group includes psychiatrists, immunologists, geneticists, computational scientists, and people with lived experience, united by a shared goal: to redefine our understanding of anxiety and depression through the lens of developmental systems biology. This is a 2-year fixed-term position in the first instance. We actively support career development and would encourage applicants looking to build toward fellowship applications.

You will lead bioinformatic investigations into the cellular immune pathogenesis of anxiety and depression, with a focus on how genetic susceptibility interacts with early-life immune exposures, particularly infection, to influence mental health. Your work will help identify immune and immune developmental pathways contributing to psychiatric risk and stratify patient subgroups for whom immune dysregulation plays a causal role.

The project will span two major strands: 

1. Functional Genomic Integration (Existing Datasets)

• Analyse major new genome-wide association study (GWAS) results for anxiety (Strom et al., 2025; 58 loci) and depression (Adams et al., 2025; 697 loci).
• Integrate these findings with functional genomic data (bulk and single-cell transcriptomic, epigenetic) from the developing and adult immune system to prioritise cell types, tissues, contexts and developmental timepoints predicted to be causally important.
• Triangulate your findings and explore immune subgroups of anxiety by leveraging large population cohorts with genotype and biomarker data.

      2. Longitudinal Birth Cohort Analysis (New Data Collection)

• Contribute to the Anixomics substudy of the C-GULL birth cohort study, which is enriching genotyped newborns with longitudinal data on infection exposure, proteomics, single-cell immune profiling, behaviour and brain imaging.
• Lead initial analysis of single-cell RNA-seq data from immune cells, exploring how genetic and infectious risk factors shape the developing immune system.
• Play a key role in study coordination.
• Access unique opportunities to develop research proposals and fellowship applications using this cohort.

Additional Responsibilities include contributing to lab strategy, research culture, and scientific development; supervising or mentoring junior researchers; and presenting findings at internal meetings and conferences. You will engage with collaborators, including those in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Functional Genomics workgroup (co-chaired by Dr Lynall) and with experts by experience.

For further details, please read the further particulars, please provide at least 3 references, a CV and covering letter indicating how you meet the criteria for this post. 

Informal enquiries are encouraged and may be directed to Dr Mary-Ellen Lynall, mel41@cam.ac.uk and/or Prof Duncan Astle duncan.astle@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk

If you have any queries regarding the application process please contact Simon Gurry (hradminpsychiatry@medschl.cam.ac.uk).

Deadline for applications is  7^th July  2025, with interviews TBC.

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