Research Associate

Full time - 35 hours per week.

Fixed term contract, if applicable: 01/07/2026 – 31/03/2028 - 21 months.

We are looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher in Biomedical Natural Language Processing.

The opportunity:

Together we can do great things. Be part of something bigger.

With roles from hospitality to research, there’s a career for everyone at the University of Edinburgh. We can offer opportunities for you to develop in your career and make a real difference in the communities around us while contributing to the world at large.

The University of Edinburgh is a world-class organisation. We look for the best in the field across all disciplines and provide a working environment where academics can develop their careers and passion for their chosen subject area. We offer the full range of academic roles and have a genuine focus on our student’s performance and wellbeing.

Improving diagnosis for rare genetic diseases is a critical challenge, requiring innovative approaches to extract and interpret complex biological and clinical information. As part of the Welcome Trust funded PARADIGM project, an initiative aiming to transform genomic medicine by identifying new causes of monogenic disease and developing annotated resources for the scientific community. This role will focus on advancing biomedical natural language processing (NLP) to enhance variant-phenotype mapping, gene-disease models, and clinical decision support. 

The successful candidate will collaborate with academics, curators, clinical scientists, clinicians, and patient groups to identify practical applications of NLP in real-world scenarios. Key responsibilities include developing novel NLP approaches to extract phenotypic information from unstructured data (e.g., literature, EHRs, clinical notes), creating domain-specific text summarisation tools, and integrating these technologies into PARADIGM’s broader research goals. The role also involves proactively disseminating work through national and international collaborations, ensuring explainable AI/ML for clinical use, and supporting students through mentorship and knowledge-sharing activities.

This position offers the opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research, work in the Biomedical Informatics Group, a multidisciplinary team in the School of Informatics, and shape the future of genomic medicine. 

Your skills and attributes for success: 

Essential Skills & Experience:

• PhD (or equivalent) in a relevant field (e.g., Natural Language Processing, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, or related disciplines). 
• Demonstrated expertise in biomedical NLP, including experience with text mining, knowledge extraction, or clinical NLP, 
• Strong programming skills in Python and familiarity with NLP toolkits. 
• Experience with large language models (LLMs) and their fine-tuning for domain-specific tasks. 
• Ability to work collaboratively within interdisciplinary teams (academics, clinicians, curators, etc.) and communicate complex technical concepts clearly. 
• Experience with scientific writing, including the ability to publish in peer-reviewed journals and present research findings at conferences. 

Desirable Skills & Experience:

• Knowledge of genetic disease biology, phenotypic data, or clinical workflows (e.g., EHRs, patient registries)   
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems or prompt engineering for NLP tasks. 
• Familiarity with agentic systems or autonomous workflows for data processing and analysis.   
• Experience with literature analysis, including the use of tools for full-text document retrieval.   
• Familiarity with variant-phenotype mapping, gene-disease model creation, or computational phenomics. 
• Experience with explainable AI/ML for clinical decision support or open-source software development.   

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