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Research Assistant & Research Associate - Department of Psychosis Studies

Employer
KINGS COLLEGE LONDON
Location
London (Greater) (GB)
Closing date
18 Dec 2020

Job Details

Research Assistant & Research Associate - Department of Psychosis Studies

Job ID: 009967

Salary: Grade 5 £32,676 – 37,297 or Grade 6 £38,304 - £45,026 per annum, including London Weighting Allowance

Posted: 13-Nov-2020

Closing date: 18-Dec-2020

Business unit: IoPPN Department: Psychosis Studies

Contact details: Dr Paolo Fusar-Poli , paolo.fusar-poli@kcl.ac.uk

Denmark Hill Campus   Research

Job description
Working as part of an established research team in the Department of Psychosis Studies at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), the successful candidates will play a key role in an innovative e-Health study: “Developing an E-Mental Health Detection Tool for Early-Stage Psychosis in the Community”.

This study will extend the benefits of early interventions to many young people with emerging psychosis. The study population will encompass young people in the community who may be at Clinical High Risk for Psychosis (CHR-P) or experiencing a First-Episode of Psychosis (FEP). The candidate will help developing, implementing and customising an innovative, cutting-edge automatic e-Health detection system (website, online-data collection system and mobile apps) to identify young people with emerging psychosis in the community. The digital detection system will be validated against remote assessments of study participants with gold-standard psychometric instruments.

The study is led by Dr Paolo Fusar-Poli (https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/paolo.fusar-poli.html; Early Psychosis: Intervention and Clinical-detection, EPIC lab) at IoPPN, who has longstanding experience using e-Health approaches (websites, mobile apps, large scale Electronic Health Records data), advanced clinical prediction modelling methods (regularised regression, machine learning), in combination with epidemiological knowledge (umbrella reviews on risk and protective factors for mental disorders). The appointees will have the unique opportunity to develop skills in e-Health, implementation of digital tools, clinical prediction modelling, advanced analytical methods, using state-of-the-art clinical informatics developed by the research team. The study will be run in collaboration with Prof. Peter Uhlhaas (University of Glasgow and Charitè, Berlin). The candidate will also receive specific training in data analysis and be expected to contribute to writing research reports for publication in high impact factor journals and at international conferences. They will join a highly productive research department with the opportunity to attend training courses in early detection and intervention in psychosis, data analysis/statistical methods as well as seminars in psychosis research. The research assistant appointee will also have the opportunity to undertake a PhD. The roles will be based at the main IoPPN building in the Denmark Hill campus of KCL and at the OASIS clinical service in Kennington Lane, but during the current pandemic will mostly be run remotely.

Two positions are available, post-doc Research Associate at Grade 6 and Research Assistant at Grade 5. The positions, both full-time are available to begin in February 2021 for 18 months and 24 months contracts, funded by a Wellcome Trust grant to Paolo Fusar-Poli.

REFERENCES: PMID: 31708822

Key responsibilities

  • Implement an innovative e-Health detection system for individuals at risk of severe mental disorders which will incorporate a website, online-data collection screening apps.
  • Administer remotely clinical interviews using psychometric tools and digital biomarkers to study participants identified through the e-Health detection system.
  • Undertake statistical analysis using STATA/R (or similar software) to develop and validate automatic screening algorithms to detect young people at potential risk for severe mental disorder in the community.
  • Contribute to writing the study report and research manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals/presentation at conferences.  

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

Skills, knowledge and experience

Essential criteria for the Research Associate only

  • PhD awarded in relevant area with a substantial component in early detection and interventions for severe mental disorders or PhD in relevant area with a substantial component in early detection and interventions for severe mental disorders near completion. 
  • Competence in standard medical statistics
  • Familiarity with the psychometric assessment for emerging psychosis

Essential criteria for both the Research Assistant and Research Associate 

  • Clinical research experience in early detection and intervention in psychosis
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills
  • Scientific publications (journal publications or conference abstracts)
  • Capable of working remotely and effectively and to adapt and learn new methods as part of a multi-disciplinary research team
  • Motivated and self-disciplined with an enthusiasm for early detection and intervention in psychosis research

Desirable criteria for both Research Assistant and Research Aassociate

  • Background knowledge in digital biomarkers and/or e-Health
  • Familiarity with statistical software packages such as STATA, R or Python
  • Research experience with digital biomarker and/or e-Health
  • Previous research experience in detection approaches for young individuals at risk for psychosis 

Further information 
This post is subject to Disclosure and Barring Service and Occupational Health clearance. 

This advertisement does meet the requirements for a Certificate of Sponsorship under Home Office regulations and therefore the university will be able to offer sponsorship for this role. 

Company

King's College London is one of the top 20 universities in the world and among the oldest in England. King's has more than 27,600 students (of whom nearly 10,500 are graduate students) from some 150 countries worldwide, and some 6,800 staff.

King's has an outstanding reputation for world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) King’s was ranked 6th nationally in the ‘power’ ranking, which takes into account both the quality and quantity of research activity, and 7th for quality according to Times Higher Education rankings. Eighty-four per cent of research at King’s was deemed ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’ (3* and 4*). The university is in the top seven UK universities for research earnings and has an overall annual income of more than £684 million.

King's has a particularly distinguished reputation in the humanities, law, the sciences (including a wide range of health areas such as psychiatry, medicine, nursing and dentistry) and social sciences including international affairs. It has played a major role in many of the advances that have shaped modern life, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA and research that led to the development of radio, television, mobile phones and radar.

King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas', King's College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts are part of King's Health Partners. King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) is a pioneering global collaboration between one of the world's leading research-led universities and three of London's most successful NHS Foundation Trusts, including leading teaching hospitals and comprehensive mental health services. For more information, visit: www.kingshealthpartners.org.

King’s £600 million campaign, World questions|KING’s answers, has delivered huge global impact in areas where King’s has particular expertise. Philanthropic support has funded new research to save young lives at Evelina London Children’s Hospital; established the King’s Dickson Poon School of Law as a worldwide leader in transnational law; built a new Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital; allowed unique collaboration between leading neuroscientists to fast-track new treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease, depression and schizophrenia at the new Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute; created the Cicely Saunders Institute: the first academic institution in the world dedicated to palliative care, and supported the King’s Sierra Leone Partnership in the Ebola crisis. Donations provide over 300 of the most promising students with scholarships and bursaries each year. More information about the campaign is available at www.kcl.ac.uk/kingsanswers.

Company info
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KINGS COLLEGE LONDON
Telephone
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Location
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LONDON
WC2R 2LS
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