Research Assistant

Research Assistant, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit

The Digital Mental Health Group is one of the UK’s most influential research teams investigating the impact of digital technologies on youth mental health, with the aim of improving outcomes for children and young people worldwide. We are known for our innovative and rigorous scientific outputs and our direct provision of scientific advice to senior policymakers and politicians.

Overview:

We are seeking a Research Assistant with experience and interest in statistical data analysis, especially of longitudinal data, to join our team full-time to help us produce high-quality research.

In this job, you will be responsible for delivering analyses – such as multilevel models – to answer research questions of high public interest on complex longitudinal datasets. These datasets can include raw social media data (e.g. from the study described in this paper: https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.70140). You will be able to produce high quality visualisations and reproducible code.

You will help to deliver a range of ongoing activities including both basic and applied research projects, collaborating with academics and government policymakers. This can include reviewing the literature and drafting reports and summaries. Therefore, competency and clear and effective writing is important to us.

You will be supported in complementing your core activities in ways that interest you and benefit the group, as well as the wider academic community: for example, by helping us when we collaborate with other teams; by analysing pre-existing data; or by playing a role when the group does outreach and media engagement. You are expected to support aspects of group administration, such as supporting the running of lab meetings and team events, as well as helping supervise or mentor more junior team members.

The post holder should be available to start late summer or autumn of 2026 for a duration of twelve months.

Interviews will take place on 23 July 2026.

Experience:

The Research Assistant role is ideal if you are looking to gain research experience prior to doing a PhD (e.g., after completing an undergraduate/master’s).

As a Research Assistant, you will be offered on the job training in the relevant statistical methods to complete the project. However, we would expect you to show previous experience in running statistical models and/or working with complex datasets, particularly in R or Python. We would also like you to have some scientific research experience, either as part of your university degree, placement years, research internships or through other relevant programmes. As part of this experience, we would like to see examples of you problem-solving and showing independent initiative, as well as delivering high-quality written work.

We encourage applicants from backgrounds traditionally marginalised and/or under-represented in the field. Further, please do not be discouraged from applying if your current CV is not a ‘perfect fit’. This job could suit someone from a range of different backgrounds, and there is great scope for the right applicant to develop the role and make it their own. If you think that this might be the role for you, please write and tell us why.

If you have any questions about this role, please send these to tania.smith@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk by 29 June 2026, we will post each anonymised question submitted by this deadline and our answer to the following document by the 1 July 2026 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yoJTO8KMKQlkqIQ5vkBTUyCjv9nh1GCLIZHGKJ6Z4ng/edit?usp=sharing

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