Research Associate (fixed-term) (ED12065)

Job title Research Associate (fixed-term)

Department Life Sciences

Salary Starting from £37,099, rising to £44,263

Grade Grade 7

Contract Type Full Time, Fixed Term

Placed on Wednesday 11 September 2024

Closing date Monday 14 October 2024

Interview date Tuesday 29 October 2024

Reference ED12065

Applicant Visa Guidance Skilled Worker visa: guidance for applicants (bath.ac.uk)

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About the role

This post has arisen because of an EPSRC grant awarded to Dr Scott Lovell and is essential to a programme of work that aims to develop covalent macrocycle inhibitors for difficult to drug cancer proteins (Nat. Biotechnol. 2021, 4, 490).

Treatment options for many cancer patients remain limited as there are no known inhibitors for most tumour-associated proteins.

Many of these proteins are deemed ‘undruggable' as they lack binding pockets that can be targeted with small molecules.

Working with members of the Lovell lab, you will help to address this unmet clinical need by developing ultra-large libraries of encoded covalent macrocycles for screening against cancer proteins.

You will achieve this by using a powerful combination of techniques including solid-phase peptide synthesis, molecular encoding, robotics, chemical proteomics and structural biology.

About you

A PhD in Chemistry/Chemical biology (or a very closely related discipline) is essential, as is experience and demonstrated competence in solid phase peptide synthetic methodology or peptide drug discovery.

You will also have experience with HPLC, LC-MS or LC-MS/MS method development and an active interest in covalent drug discovery and cancer research.

Experience with display technologies, mass spectrometry-based chemical proteomics techniques (i.e. ABPP), proteomics software or development of bioinformatic analysis pipelines is desirable.

As this post includes some laboratory management duties, you must be highly organised and have excellent communication and teamwork skills.

Critically, you must be an independent worker and a problem solver as you will be supervising undergraduate students and training junior members of the lab.

Further information

The University of Bath ranks 6th in the Guardian University Guide 2024.

Our campus is surrounded by beautiful countryside and is walking distance to the UNESCO world heritage city of Bath, creating an excellent environment in which to work.

Research in the Department of Life Sciences is highly diverse, spanning drug discovery science and healthcare to evolutionary biology and biodiversity, achieving a rank of world leading or internationally competitive in the REF2021 assessment.

This is a full-time fixed-term contract for 36 months, with potential for further extension. For an informal discussion about the role please contact Dr Lovell ([email protected]), however, please submit your application via the University website.

As a member of Research Staff at the University of Bath, you will be encouraged to take up a minimum of 10 days professional development pro rata per year.

Find out more about our benefits.

We consider ourselves to be a university where difference is celebrated, respected and encouraged. We have an excellent international reputation with staff from over 60 different nations and have made a positive commitment towards gender equality and intersectionality receiving a Silver Athena SWAN award. We truly believe that diversity of experience, perspectives, and backgrounds will lead to a better environment for our employees and students, so we encourage applications from all genders, backgrounds, and communities, particularly from under-represented groups, and value the positive impact that will have on the university. We are committed to maintaining a safe and secure environment for our students, staff, and community by reinforcing our Safer Recruitment commitment.

We are very proud to be an autism friendly university and are an accredited Disability Confident Leader; committed to building disability confidence and supporting disabled staff.

Find out from our staff what makes the University of Bath a great place to work. Follow us @UniofBath and @UniofBathJobs on Twitter for more information.

We are constantly seeking to reduce the unconscious bias that enters any assessment process, with the goal of creating an inclusive and equal assessment process. To support this, personal details such as your name, may be removed from application forms at the initial shortlisting stage.