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Research Associate Fellow in Respiratory Medicine
Accepting applications until: 28-Jul-2025 23:59
Vacancy status: Open
Accepting applications until: 28-Jul-2025 23:59
Key details
Location
- Site
- Royal Brompton Hospital and Centre of Bacterial Resistance Biology, Imperial College London
- Town
- London
- Postcode
- SW3 6NP
- Major / Minor Region
- London
Contract type & working pattern
- Contract
- Fixed term: 18 months (N/A)
- Hours
- Full time - 40 hours per week (n/a)
Salary
- Salary
- £61,825 - £70,425 per annum
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Grade
- (Clinical Fellow)
Specialty
- Main area
- Respiratory Medicine
Guy’s and St Thomas’ is among the UK’s busiest and most successful NHS foundation trusts. We provide a full range of hospital and community services for people in south London and as well as specialist care for patients from further afield including cancer, renal, orthopaedic, respiratory and cardiovascular services.
Guy’s is home to the largest dental school in Europe and a £160 million Cancer Centre opened in 2016. As part of our commitment to provide care closer to home, in 2017 we also opened a cancer centre and a kidney treatment centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. St Thomas’ has one of the largest critical care units in the UK and one of the busiest emergency departments in London. It is also home to Evelina London Children’s Hospital.
Evelina London cares for local children in Lambeth and Southwark and provides specialist services across south east England including cardiac, renal and critical care services. We lead a number of specialist service networks aiming to ensure children are treated locally where possible, but have access to specialist expertise when they need it. Our community services include health visiting, school nursing and support for families of children with long-term conditions.
Our adult community services teams deliver care at the heart of the local communities we serve, working in partnership with GPs, local authorities and other healthcare and voluntary sector organisations. Working with our partners in Lambeth and Southwark, we are focusing on new ways of working to improve care for local patients.
In February 2021 the Royal Brompton and Harefield joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together world-leading expertise in the care and research of heart and lung disease. Our merger provides a once in a generation opportunity to build a lasting, world-renowned heart and lung centre, providing the highest quality care for patients and conducting world-leading research.
We have a reputation for clinical excellence and high quality teaching and research. We are part of King’s Health Partners, one of eight accredited UK academic health sciences centres. In partnership with King’s College London we have dedicated clinical research facilities including an MHRA accredited Phase I clinical trials unit.
Patients are at the heart of everything we do and we pride ourselves on ensuring the best possible patient experience as well as safe, high quality care. We are proud to have one of the lowest mortality rates in the NHS. Following a comprehensive Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in 2019 we maintained our overall rating of ‘good’. Our adult community services achieved a rating of ‘outstanding’.
The commitment of our 23,500 staff is key to our success. We are one of the largest local employers and we aim to develop and support all our staff so they are able to deliver high quality, safe and efficient care. The 2019 NHS staff survey results show that we have one of the most engaged and motivated workforces in the NHS. We know this has a positive impact on the care provided to our patients.
We have one of the most ambitious capital investment programmes anywhere in the NHS.
Job overview
Department Information
This post will be situated between the respiratory infection department at the Royal Brompton hospital, Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation trust and the Shah/Singanayagam laboratories at the Centre of Bacterial Resistance Biology, Imperial College London. The Royal Brompton hospital has the largest cohort of patients with bronchiectasis in Europe with ~2000 individuals with bronchiectasis related to a number of aetiologies including idiopathic, primary and secondary immunodeficiency, primary ciliary dyskinesia, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis and cystic fibrosis.
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1. Duties and Responsibilities
- To take initiatives in the planning of research
- To direct the work of small research teams
- To conduct data analysis
- To write reports for submission to research sponsors
- To present findings to colleagues and at conferences
- To submit publications to refereed journals
- To provide guidance to PhD Students
· To maintain highly organised and accurate record of experimental work
· To actively participate in the research programme of the Group
· To participate in Group research meetings and internal seminars
· To contribute to the smooth running of the Group’s laboratories and, facilities with other scientists, clinicians, technicians and students within the laboratories
· Assist in the supervision of undergraduate and postgraduate research students and research assistants as required
· Any other duties as may be deemed reasonable by Head of group as well as Head of Division/Department/Section
Working for our organisation
Organisational Values:
Our values help us to define and develop our culture, what we do and how we do it. It is important that you understand and reflect these values throughout your employment with the Trust.
The post holder will be:
Caring – we put patients first
Ambitious – we innovate and strive for excellence
Inclusive – we respect each other and work collaboratively
Our values and behaviours framework| describes what it means for every one of us in the Trust to put our values into action.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
1. Job Summary
The post will be jointly supervised between Dr Anand Shah and Dr Aran Singanayagam. This is a 18 month post funded by an industry collaboration to identify the molecular pathways relevant to disease pathophysiology in the chronic respiratory condition bronchiectasis. The post will use existing ethically approved research projects to obtain clinical samples including upper and lower airway samples from individuals with chronic respiratory disease with a focus on bronchiectasis. A key aspect of the project will be to expand bronchial epithelial samples to be used within multiple analysis techniques and/or assays. In particular, the cultured cells will be used to create different models of disease such air-liquid interface cultures which can be used to study responses both before and after administration of different stimuli (e.g. pathogens or inflammatory ligands) and/or candidate molecules
We are aiming to recruit an enthusiastic, dynamic, and motivated postdoctoral research associate with an interest in host-pathogen interactions, who wishes to expand their research portfolio. You will join an exciting multidisciplinary group with expertise in immunology and molecular microbiology. The post holder will be required to work both individually and as a team and may be required to teach more junior members of the laboratory. You should integrate with the group with a cooperative, enthusiastic and flexible approach.
Essential Requirements:
· PhD in immunology or equivalent vocational qualification
· Work independently and be competent in general lab techniques, including cell culture, qPCR, ELISA, WB, bioinformatics and data analysis.
Desirable Requirements:
· Prior experience in epithelial cell culture including air-liquid interface and/or pulmonary organoid models
· Prior experience in analysis of large sequencing datasets (bulk RNA-seq) with associated competence in using R or similar analysis packages.
2. Key Relationships
The postholder will be integrated into the research group led by Dr Anand Shah and Dr Aran Singanayagam with a clinical translational research role across the Royal Brompton hospital and the Centre of Bacterial Resistance Biology, Imperial College London.
Selected papers from the Shah/Singanayagam lab
Almond M, Farne H, K, Jackson MM, Jha A, Katsoulis O (et al)…Johnston SL, Singanayagam A. Obesity dysregulates the pulmonary antiviral immune response. Nature Communications 2023. 14: 6607.
George PM, Reed A, Desai S, Devaraj A, Faiez TS, (et al)…Shah A, Singanayagam A. A persistent neutrophil-associated immune signature characterises post-COVID19 pulmonary sequelae. Science Translational Medicine. 2022; 14: 671
Singanayagam A, Foottit J, Marcyzynski M, Radicioni G, Cross MT et al. Airway mucins promote immunopathology in virus-exacerbated chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. J Clin Invest 2022; 132: e120901.
Kamal F, Kumar S, Edwards MR, Veselkov K, Belluomo I, (et al.)….Singanayagam A, Hanna GB*. Virus-induced volatile organic compounds are detectable in exhaled breath during pulmonary infection. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2021. 204: 1075-85.
Finney L, Glanville N, Farne H, Aniscenko J, Fenwick P, (et al.)…Johnston SL, Singanayagam A. Inhaled corticosteroids downregulate the SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 in COPD through suppression of type I interferon. J Allerg Clin Immunol 2021; 147: 510-19.
3. Duties and Responsibilities
- To take initiatives in the planning of research
- To direct the work of small research teams
- To conduct data analysis
- To write reports for submission to research sponsors
- To present findings to colleagues and at conferences
- To submit publications to refereed journals
- To provide guidance to PhD Students
· To maintain highly organised and accurate record of experimental work
· To actively participate in the research programme of the Group
· To participate in Group research meetings and internal seminars
· To contribute to the smooth running of the Group’s laboratories and, facilities with other scientists, clinicians, technicians and students within the laboratories
· Assist in the supervision of undergraduate and postgraduate research students and research assistants as required
· Any other duties as may be deemed reasonable by Head of group as well as Head of Division/Department/Section
Applicant requirements
Person specification
Qualifications/ Education
Essential criteria
- A primary degree in a health or biology related subject
- PhD in biology or related subject
- Work independently and be competent in general lab techniques, including cell culture, qPCR, ELISA, WB, bioinformatics and data analysis.
Previous experience
Essential criteria
- Ability to work as part of a team as well as on own initiative
Skills/Knowledge/ Ability
Essential criteria
- Work independently and be competent in general lab techniques, including cell culture, qPCR, ELISA, WB, bioinformatics and data analysis
Desirable criteria
- Prior experience in epithelial cell culture including air-liquid interface and/or pulmonary organoid models
- Prior experience in analysis of large sequencing datasets (bulk RNA-seq) with associated competence in using R or similar analysis packages
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Shah Anand
- Job title
- Dr Anand Shah PhD Consultant Respiratory Physician
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Additional information
Dr Aran Singanayagam
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