Research Scientist – Maternal Sleep

About us

King’s College London is an internationally renowned university delivering exceptional education & world-leading research. We are dedicated to driving positive and sustainable change in society and realising our vision of making the world a better place. We are delighted to announce exciting new opportunities to join our community.

About the role

The post of Research Scientist – Maternal Sleep leads a programme on obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and nocturnal hypoxaemia in pregnancy and their impact on maternal and perinatal outcomes.  The post is responsible for the design and delivery of observational cohort studies and interventional trials of sleep-disordered breathing in pregnancy to generate pregnancy-specific diagnostic evidence in a field where adult diagnostic thresholds are poorly validated. The post holder is expected to secure external research funding and to translate findings into antenatal screening and treatment pathways.

The post holder will work closely with clinicians, researchers, data scientists, behavioural scientists, digital health specialists, and international collaborators across EMBRACE partner sites to develop and deliver high-quality, scalable, AI-enabled research studies and interventions.

The post holder could be a non-clinical sleep or perinatal scientist or a clinically qualified doctor in specialty training or beyond. The post does not include any clinical/healthcare delivery and is categorised by the university as a non-clinical/basic science post. The salary reflects this and is not linked to NHS salary scales.

This is a full-time, fixed-term contract for 4 years.

Research staff at King’s are entitled to at least 10 days per year (pro-rata) for professional development. This entitlement, from the  Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, applies to Postdocs, Research Assistants, Research & Teaching Technicians, Teaching Fellows and AEP equivalent up to and including grade 7. Visit the  Centre for Research Staff Development for more information.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills & experience:

Essential criteria

• PhD in sleep or respiratory physiology, epidemiology, biomedical engineering, physiology or a closely related discipline, together with relevant postdoctoral research experience
• Working knowledge of maternal & perinatal outcomes (hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, gestational diabetes, foetal growth restriction, preterm birth), including experience working with objective sleep measurement (PSG and/or home sleep apnoea testing) and interpretation of sleep study data.
• Experience contributing to the design & delivery of clinical, behavioural, population health, or digital health research studies, including ethics approval and participant-facing protocols.
• A record of publications in peer-reviewed journals, experience presenting research findings at national/international conferences and applying for research funding.
• Project management skills - ability to work across disciplinary boundaries with obstetricians, midwives, sleep physiologists & statisticians to initiate, plan, organise, implement and deliver programmes of work to tight deadlines.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of research in pregnant, perinatal or other populations requiring enhanced ethical safeguards, including randomised controlled trial experience.
• Quantitative research skills, including experience of longitudinal analysis using R, Python or equivalent statistical software, or demonstrable aptitude to develop these skills with appropriate statistical support.
• Experience of large maternity cohorts, routine data linkage or other large-scale health datasets, including resources such as national maternity datasets or biobanks.
• Experience of sleep, physiological or digital phenotyping, including validation of consumer wearables or novel sensing technologies against gold-standard polysomnography (PSG), and/or cardiovascular or placental phenotyping.
• Experience of translating research into practice, including implementation science or health economics, securing or contributing to externally funded research, and/or supervision or line management.

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