Agriculture, Health and Environment

Location:      Medway campus
Salary:      £33,199 to £38,460
Contract Type:      Permanent
Closing Date:      Wednesday 25 September 2019
Interview Date:      To be confirmed

Do you have what it takes to make an impact on global food and nutrition security? We are looking for exceptional candidates to help drive forward our work to improve the lives of poor people.

The Natural Resources Institute (NRI – https://www.nri.org/) of the University of Greenwich carries out specialised research, teaching, training and consultancy with a focus on food, agriculture, environment and sustainable livelihoods.

NRI is currently expanding its interdisciplinary research excellence to address food and nutrition security, especially in Africa. This expansion is funded by UKRI’s Research England under the ‘Expanding Excellence in England’ scheme. Elements of this new investment include new staff, PhD studentships, infrastructure and partnerships (see www.nri.org/FanSI). Investment will be across four specific areas:

• Climate Change, Agriculture and Natural Resources
• Sustainable Agricultural Intensification
• Food Loss and Waste
• Food Systems for Improved Nutrition

NRI’s work is globally respected and has won many awards including a recent Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education. The Institute is located at the University’s vibrant Medway Campus in Chatham Maritime, Kent.

NRI is looking to appoint a Fellow to undertake research on bioinformatics. The focus of the role will be on high quality research, with a possible contribution to teaching activities of up to 10%. There may also be opportunities to supervise postgraduate MPhil/PhD students. This role mainly contributes to our Sustainable Agricultural Intensification Programme.

Candidates for this post will enhance the research capacity at NRI in bioinformatics and will support the work of existing projects within NRI on a daily basis, working in collaboration with existing researchers and PhD students at NRI. The selected candidate will assist in the design and execution of sequencing experiments to address specific research questions across a diversity of research topics.

The successful candidate must have proven experience of analysing large next generation sequence datasets, and the necessary skill set to validate data outputs using different software. Gene mining and analysis of transcriptome data such as those generated from RNA-Seq will also be desirable.

Excellent scientific writing skills are an essential requirement of the post, as is the ability and willingness to undertake short term national and international travel. In-depth biological understanding of entomology, plant pathology and/or plant physiology will be considered an advantage.

This position offers the opportunity to work in a large global organization and to play a major role in expanding the bioinformatics facilities at the Natural Resources Institute. A proven record of successful collaboration and co-operation in previous research/projects is essential to this key role.

For informal enquiries, please contact the Programme Leader (Professor Jeremy Haggar (J.P.Haggar@gre.ac.uk) or Head of Department (Richard Hopkins (R.J.Hopkins@gre.ac.uk).

We aim to be an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all sections of the community.