Research Fellow

The School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences is currently seeking to appoint an exceptional candidate to the post of Research Fellow. The post involves working with a multi-disciplinary team as part of a collaborative project entitled “SPACE: Supportive environments for Physical and social Activity, healthy ageing and CognitivE health”.  This ambitious project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ukri.org).

The overall aim of this research project is to investigate the impacts, and possible mechanistic pathways, of urban environments on healthy ageing and cognitive health, and on diverse individuals and communities, through the novel integration of multi-omics, lifestyle behaviour and environmental exposures from urban environments, to ensure that we create healthy active places that are supportive, attractive and accessible to people as they age.

This researcher will use multi-omic approaches within our rich Northern Ireland Cohort for the Longitudinal study of Aging (NICOLA) resources to investigate biological responses to urban environments and related environmental exposures that influence measures of cognitive health.  The researcher will primarily focus on exploring biological markers with a focus on DNA methylation analysis.  Genome-wide SNP-based data, epigenome-wide methylation data and transcriptome sequencing data is already available to support analyses.  A customised next generation targeted sequencing panel will be developed in collaboration with an industrial partner.

The post may involve liaising with international collaborators, collating existing data, coordinating meetings and workshops, generating new molecular laboratory data, bioinformatic analysis of data, integrating datasets, preparing regular summary reports, and taking the lead writing academic outputs and research dissemination.

Ref: 21/109119 Centre for Public Health

Closing date: 20-09-2021