Research Fellow (Computational Biology/Bioinformatics)

About us

The mission of the UCL GOS Institute of Child Health is to maximise and advocate for the holistic health of all children, young people and the adults they will become, through world-class research, education and public engagement. The UCL GOS ICH, together with its clinical partner Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, forms the largest concentration of children’s health research outside North America. The 2024-29 GOS ICH strategy focuses on its five scientific programmes. GOS ICH’s activities include active engagement with children and families, to ensure that our work is relevant and appropriate to their needs. The Institute offers world-class education and training across a wide range of teaching and life learning programmes which address the needs of students and professional groups who are interested in and undertaking work relevant to child health. GOS ICH holds an Athena SWAN Charter Gold Award.

About the role

We are seeking a highly motivated and collaborative scientist with excellent communication skills. You will be working with large, comprehensive pathogen genomic datasets, including state-of-the-art long-read sequence data, and well-curated patient and disease metadata to develop computational models for predicting disease risk (primarily in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection), identify complex infections, and optimise and develop bioinformatic tools for sequencing data analysis. Your role will involve building and applying advanced statistical models, machine learning techniques, and computational frameworks to address key questions in pathogen biology, transmission and drug resistance. The post is funded through the UKRI MRC and is available for three years from 01/01/2026 until 31/12/2028 in the first instance, with the possibility for extension.

About you

You must have a PhD (or be near completion) in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Molec ular Biology, Biostatistics, or related subjects. You must be proficient in NGS sequencing and genomic data analysis, with high-level programming skills in R, Python or similar. You must also demonstrate your ability to communicate well to a multidisciplinary team and write to high standards for impactful publications. Previous experience with bacterial pathogens, machine learning, and computational tool development is desirable. You will provide your expertise to the team and will assist us in the development of computational models to predict disease risk from pathogen genomic and patient data, as well as developing and optimising bioinformatic tools for sequencing data analysis and diagnosing complex bacterial infections. This post is great opportunity for career development, and you will have the opportunity to lead your own research projects within the remit of the project, attend national and international conferences, and travel internationally to collaborating groups in USA, Canada, Peru and others.

What we offer

Visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/reward-and-benefits to find out more.

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce. You can read more about our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion here : https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equality-diversity-inclusion/ If you have any queries regarding the application process, please contact Madhur Sharma on quoting job reference: B02-09476.

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