Job Advertisement Title: Research Associate in human regulatory T cell immunology

Salary: £37,904 – £45,547 per annum

Location: Imperial College London, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medicine, St. Mary’s campus. London, UK.

Job Summary

The purpose of the post is to recruit a passionate, self-motivated and dynamic postdoctoral Research Associate to join Dr. Dominguez-Villar’s laboratory at Imperial College London, UK. Our research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that maintain human regulatory T cell identity and plasticity and the regulation of CD4+ T cell responses in autoimmune and infectious disease settings.

We have recently defined key signalling pathways underlying human Treg plasticity and acquisition of a Th1-like effector phenotype (Nat Immunol 2018;19:665, Cell Mol Life Sci 2017;74:4059, EMBO Rep 2016;17:1169). The successful candidate will examine the role of specific signalling pathways in maintaining Treg identity and modulating plasticity, and the role of environmental factors in activating/inhibiting them, with application to autoimmune diseases. This is a highly translational research project that will involve human samples from healthy individuals and patients, and might involve in vivo models of autoimmunity. The successful candidate will have a strong human molecular immunology background and experience in human immunology and related techniques. Flow cytometry, culture of primary T cells and Tregs, as well as molecular biology techniques are essential skills for applicants to be considered. Experience with in vivo models of autoimmunity and bioinformatics skills are desired but not required.

Duties and responsibilities

You will be responsible for designing, performing and analysing experiments, and share findings with coleagues.

You will help supervise students as needed.

You will be responsible for identifying and optimizing new techniques for the collection and analysis of data

You will write reports for submission to funding agencies, and manuscripts for submission to peer-review journals.

Essential requirements

  • PhD in molecular or cellular immunology with experience in human immunology.
  • Expertise in Treg and T cell cultures.
  • Techniques required: flow cytometry, molecular biology techniques (DNA, RNA isolation, gene expression analysis, gene silencing/overexpression,, plasmid isolation, ChIP-seq)
  • Statistical analysis of data
  • Willingness to work as part of a team, to collaborate and help other coleagues when necessary.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Further Information

Salary range: £37,904 – £45,547 per annum

Duration of contract: Full-time, fixed term for 2 years in the first instance

Should you require any further details on the role please contact Dr. Margarita Dominguez-Villar ([email protected]). Candidates will need to complete an online application. For technical ussues when applying online please email [email protected].

The College is a proud signatory to the San-Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which means that in hiring and promotion decisions, we evaluate applicants on the quality of their work, not the journal impact factor where it is published. For more information, see https://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-evaluation/

The College believes that the use of animals in research is vital to improve human and animal health and welfare. Animals may only be used in research programmes where their use is shown to be necessary for developing new treatments and making medical advances. Imperial is committed to ensuring that, in cases where this research is deemed essential, all animals in the College’s care are treated with full respect, and that all staff involved with this work show due consideration at every level.

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-integrity/animal-research/

Imperial College is committed to equality of opportunity, to eliminating discrimination and to creating an inclusive working environment. We are an Athena SWAN Silver award winner, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, a Disability Confident Employer and work in partnership with GIRES to promote respect for trans people.

Closing date: 31/01/2019

Interviews: the first two weeks of February 2019

To apply, visit www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs and search by the job reference MED00940