PDRA/PDRF - Genomic Data Science/Bioinformatics

Salary Details

At Postdoctoral Research Associate level, the starting salary will be from £34,610 on Grade E, depending on qualifications and experience.

At Postdoctoral Research Fellow level, the starting salary will be from £43,482 on Grade F, depending on qualifications and experience.

The above full-time (1.0 FTE) post is available from 5^th January 2026 (flexible start date) until 4^th January 2029, on a fixed-term basis within the Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy.

This role offers the opportunity for hybrid working – some time on campus and some from home.

The post

The Faculty wishes to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Associate/Fellow to participate in a project to study immune response in neurodegenerative disease. Immune responses play a critical role in the onset and progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. However, the mechanisms underlying these responses remain unclear, including the stages at which they are protective or detrimental, and whether shared mechanisms exist across the diseases.

The postdoctoral position is part of a large-scale collaborative research project involving, among others, the University of Exeter, Open Targets, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, EMBL-EBI, and the University of Oxford. The project aims to optimise and utilise cellular model systems, gene editing, and single-cell transcriptomic and spatial approaches to better understand immune responses in neurodegeneration.

The postdoctoral researcher will join a data science team at the University of Exeter that focuses on data analysis and experimental design for genome editing experiments and single-cell transcriptomic/spatial datasets.

This is a fixed term position for 3 years, with flexible start date between 01/2026 and 05/2026.

About you

Applicants will hold a PhD or equivalent qualification/experience in statistics, bioinformatics, computer science, computational biology, genomics, or a related discipline. They will have experience applying statistics and/or machine learning to biological or medical research questions, ideally including the analysis of omics datasets.

Proficiency in R and Python, as well as experience using high-performance computing clusters, is essential. The successful applicant will demonstrate the ability to work effectively in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment, engaging with both computational and experimental researchers.

Experience in analysing single-cell omics datasets would be an advantage. This position offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to high-impact biomedical research in close collaboration with experimental groups and partners across academia and industry.

Please ensure you read the Job Description and Person Specification for full details of this role, by clicking on the ‘apply’ button.

The successful applicant will be able to make presentations at conferences and other events.

Further information

Informal enquiries are encouraged. For further information please contact Dr Magdalena Strauss, e-mail m.strauss@exeter.ac.uk.

The closing date for completed applications is 1/12/2025. Interviews (online) are expected to take place in December.

The University of Exeter is an equal opportunity employer. We are officially recognised as a Disability Confident employer and an Athena Swan accredited institution. Whilst all applicants will be judged on merit alone, we particularly welcome applications from groups currently underrepresented in the workforce.

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