Research Scientist

Applications Close: 03 December 2019

Salary: £31,625 to £38,575 depending on qualifications and experience

Contract Length: 23 months

Applications are invited for a highly motivated individual to Join the Food Databanks and National Capability (FDNC, https://fdnc.quadram.ac.uk/), in collaboration with Dr Lindsay Hall’s research group (https://quadram.ac.uk/lindsay-hall/) at the Quadram Institute (QIB) and lead a dietary intervention study on diet and gut microbiome.

Background:

FDNC compiles and publishes data on the composition of foods eaten in the UK, which is utilised by a wide-range of stakeholders from a variety of disciplines, and underpins research in food, nutrition and health. This includes the government’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey, which is used to inform public health policy. We are additionally responsible for developing and maintaining eBASIS, a database of non-nutrient plant-derived bioactive compounds with putative health benefits in foods. eBASIS provides information from published literature about bioactives with putative health benefits, or detrimental effects in humans, supported by peer-reviewed evidence.

The FDNC team is active in participating and leading a succession of UK- and EU-funded projects and consortia around diet and health. We are currently leading an EIT Food activity around personalised nutrition services and are one of the lead partners in a consortium to develop an EU-wide Food, Nutrition Security (FNS) Data Cloud (FNS-Cloud, 2019-2023) to connect various types of data relevant for the food and health research community.

The Hall lab’s research focus involves defining the interactions of the host with the gut microbiota, with a focus on microbe-diet interactions and microbe-host cross-talk. The lab utilises multi-disciplinary approaches to explore these themes including innovative in vitro and in vivo models complemented with metabolomics, next generation sequencing and bioinformatics approaches and analysis.

The role:

The post holder will be expected to undertake all aspects relating to a human dietary intervention study, designed to test the effects of a bioactive-rich diet on the diversity of gut microbial composition (assessed through metagenomics) and glucose metabolism (through continuous glucose monitors). The post holder will be responsible for activities including: (i) preparation and submission of ethical review documents, (ii) recruitment of participants, (iii) collection and all aspects of analysis of samples, and (iv) contributing to the collation and drafting of scientific reports and progress reports. The study is part of the Horizon 2020 FNS-Cloud project, in which QIB is a leading partner, that aims to build an EU-wide Food and Nutrition Security Cloud that will connect various types of data relevant for the food, nutrition and health community.

The ideal candidate:

This post will be well-suited to a PhD graduate in Biological Sciences, with an interest in nutrition and the role of the gut microbiome. You will have prior experience with undertaking laboratory-based research studies in diet and health or microbiology, and preferably have participated in running or coordinating a human intervention study. You will have strong interpersonal skills to facilitate interactions on a day-to-day basis with the study participants.
You will also have good organisational skills and ability to interact and collaborate with researchers from different disciplines (e.g. nutrition science, microbiology, bioinformatics).

Additional information:

Salary on appointment will be within the range £31,625 to £38,575 per annum depending on qualifications and experience. This is a full-time post for a contract of 23 months.

Further information and details of how to apply can be found here or contact the Human Resources team on 01603 450462 or nbi.recruitment@nbi.ac.uk  quoting reference 1003806.

Click here to find out more about working at Quadram Institute Bioscience.

We are committed to equal opportunities and welcome applications from all sectors of society.  The Institute supports equality of opportunity within the workplace and expects all employees to share and display these values.  To support our commitment, we have a range of family, faith and diversity friendly working arrangements to help all staff achieve excellence in their area of work.

As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to offer an interview to all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for this vacancy.

About the Quadram Institute:

The Quadram Institute is a new interdisciplinary research institute at the forefront of a new era in food and health research. Its mission is to understand how food and the gut microbiota are linked to the promotion of health and the prevention of disease. A partnership between Quadram Institute Bioscience, the University of East Anglia, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and BBSRC, it brings together scientists and clinicians in a new state-of-the-art building. The Quadram Institute is based on the Norwich Research Park, one of Europe’s largest centres of life sciences and home of the John Innes Centre and The Earlham Institute.

The closing date for applications will be 3 December 2019.

The Quadram Institute Bioscience is a registered charity (No. 1058499) and is an Equal Opportunities Employer.

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