King's College London

About us:

We are part of the King’s MND Care and Research Centre, a prize-winning internationally recognized group of clinical and laboratory research teams working to accelerate the search for a cure for motor neuron disease (also known as ALS). We work across King’s College London and King’s College Hospital at the Denmark Hill site.

About the role:

The postholder will join a team of AI specialists, informaticians, statisticians and clinicians to build digital twins for clinical trials in motor neuron disease (MND, also known as ALS).

This post sits within the Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/neuroscience/about/departments/basic-clinical-neuroscience), working closely with Biostatistics and Health Informatics (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/bhi), and will be part of a team working to digitally simulate populations of people with motor neuron disease for the purposes of clinical trial design and optimisation.

The role sits within the UK Motor Neuron Disease Research Institute (https://ukmndri.org) and the NIHR BRC Motor Neuron Disease theme (https://www.maudsleybrc.nihr.ac.uk/research/motor-neuron-disease-mnd/), and is part of the Precision ALS programme in the TRICALS Consortium, Europe’s largest MND research initiative.

We are looking for an independent thinker who wants to be part of a growing team to lead bioinformatics methodology and improve the efficiency of trial designs within the MND space.

The aim is to accelerate the search for a cure for MND, working with the clinical and statistics team members modelling digital twins in a virtual population. The results will be suitable for informing clinical trial design and potentially providing evidence of the predicted placebo effect in trials where a placebo arm was absent.

The postholder will work with the statistical, computing and clinical teams to develop and test a simulated digital twins model, including developing relevant code and running simulations, handling clinical trial data compliant with data, confidentiality and ethics rules, working within a Trusted Research Environment to access clinical data.

The postholder should be capable of performing the modelling using multiple approaches, taking into account issues such as waiting times, disease progression rates, disease heterogeneity, correlated clinical and biological features and their effects on the model. Methods will include development of digital twins using simulation, deep learning, AI, and large language models, with validation against real world populations from a national register, clinical trials and clinic registers, including the ability to model the natural biases of each data source.

This is a full time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract until 05/11/27

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. PhD qualified in relevant subject area
2. Post-graduate degree in computing, informatics, bioinformatics or related subject
3. Considerable understanding of clinical and biological datasets and data modelling
4. Knowledge/experience in simulation, large language models, AI, deep learning, statistical methods
5. Experience of working as the technical expert in a multidisciplinary team

Desirable criteria

1. Experience working with clinical trial or routinely collected healthcare data
2. Experience analysing large, complex, or longitudinal datasets
3. Experience developing and validating computational models using statistical, simulation and/or AI-based approaches.
4. Experience as the bioinformatics lead in published medical research
5. To have published in leading clinical journals with a clear position of contribution commensurate with a Research Excellence Framework of at least nationally relevant impact

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.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, and we recognise its growing role in professional work. Applicants may use AI tools to support preparation of their application, for example to research the role or structure written responses. However, applications must reflect the applicant’s own work and experience. AI tools should not be used during interviews or assessment activities unless this has been agreed in advance as a reasonable adjustment. Further guidance on the use of AI in recruitment can be found  here.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

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