King's College London

About Us

The successful applicant will be located with the newly created Research Department of Digital Twins (North Wing of St Thomas’ Hospital), primarily supervised by Dr Martin Bishop. The post will benefit from the computational and clinical electrophysiological infrastructure provided by the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and will be based at St Thomas’ Hospital. 

This work will be performed in close collaboration with the clinical researchers at KCL and St Thomas’ Hospital, lead by Dr John Whitaker and Prof Aldo Rinaldi.  

About The Role

Catheter ablation therapy involves ‘burning’ small areas of cardiac tissue in order to permanently disrupt the problematic electrical pathways driving potentially lethal arrhythmias. However, procedure times and complication rates are high, whilst success rates are punitively low (~50% success), largely due to the significant challenges clinicians face in identifying the ideal ‘target’ to ablate. Here, we aim to further develop, clinically validate, and prospectively evaluate, a novel in-silico tool that uses patient imaging data to reconstruct personalised ‘digital twin’ cardiac models to provide pre-procedural ablation target guidance. This will provide essential confidence and data to guide a follow-up prospective randomised clinical trial. In this project, funded by a British Heart Foundation Programme Grant, we will refine our existing research computational tool and technology into a robust, well-engineering software as a medical device, ready for clinical evaluation. The tool will then be deployed in a clinical study to evaluate its performance in enhancing patient therapy.

This is a full time post (35 Hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract for up to 2 years.

Research staff at King’s are entitled to at least 10 days per year (pro-rata) for professional development. This entitlement, from the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, applies to Postdocs, Research Assistants, Research and Teaching Technicians, Teaching Fellows and AEP equivalent up to and including grade 7. Visit the Centre for Research Staff Development for more information.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. 1st or 2nd class hons degree in computer science, biomedical engineering, physics, mathematics or related subject
2. PhD qualified in computer science, biomedical engineering, physics, mathematics or related subject
3. Excellent programming skills in Python, including familiarity with libraries such as NumPy, SciPy and Pandas
4. Familiarity with Linux/ Unix-based systems
5. Good writing and presentation skills
6. Desire to work in medical modelling in a clinical environment
7. Able to work on own initiative and in a team, and communicate effectively with people from wide variety of disciplines and organisations
8. Flexible approach to hours of work and duties

Desirable criteria

1. Experience in cardiac research
2. Knowledge of cardiac physiology
3. Knowledge of how to perform numerical simulations and analysis
4. Advanced knowledge of signal and image processing techniques
5. Formal experience of software engineering

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further Information

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘ How we Recruit’ pages.

This post is subject to Disclosure and Barring Service and Occupational Health clearances.