Research Assistant/Associate in Bioinformatics and Chromatin biology (Maternity Cover)

This role is being advertised as a Research Assistant (Grade 5) or Research Associate (Grade 6).

Candidates with experience matching either role are welcome to apply as the role can be amended to fit the experience level of the right candidate.

The Nagarajan lab within the Division of Molecular and Cellular Function, School of Biological Sciences wish to appoint a bioinformatics-based Research Associate to an exciting project exploring transcriptional mechanisms of noncoding RNAs in breast cancers.

During this position, the post-holder will work on the epigenetic and enhancer-related mechanisms regulated by chromatin proteins identified from our CRISPR screen and RNA-seq analysis, to regulate/associate with noncoding RNA expression leading to mRNA regulation. We are examining the global changes in transcription and enhancer activity regulated by these chromatin proteins and define the role of them in transcriptional regulation in human breast cancer cell lines. A large part of the work by the candidate will be in analysing KAS-seq, ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, bulk and single cell RNA-seq datasets generated on the Illumina next generation sequencing platform in an integrative manner to understand the specific role of the epigenetic proteins in mRNA regulation.

Essential Skills, Knowledge and Experience

• Hold (or expect to hold shortly) a Masters or PhD (or equivalent) in Bioinformatics/Molecular Biology
• Have advanced Bioinformatics training, at least to Masters level or ideally to PhD level.
• Have excellent computing skills, specifically experience of programming in one or more of Python, R, Perl, Java or C\C++

Desirable Skills

• Training in statistics or mathematics
• High-throughput sequencing data analysis (e.g. RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq data)
• High Performance Computing (e.g. Ethernet clusters)
• Publishing computational methods as open source software
• Software development using version control (e.g. GitHub, SVN etc.)

This post is funded by the Cancer Research UK charity.

What you will get in return:

• Fantastic market leading Pension scheme
• Excellent employee health and wellbeing services including an Employee Assistance Programme
• Exceptional starting annual leave entitlement, plus bank holidays
• Additional paid closure over the Christmas period
• Local and national discounts at a range of major retailers

As an equal opportunities employer we welcome applicants from all sections of the community regardless of age, sex, gender (or gender identity), ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and transgender status.  All appointments are made on merit.

Our University is positive about flexible working – you can find out more here

Hybrid working arrangements may be considered.         

Please note that we are unable to respond to enquiries, accept CVs or applications from Recruitment Agencies.

Any recruitment enquiries from recruitment agencies should be directed to People.Recruitment@manchester.ac.uk.

Any CV’s submitted by a recruitment agency will be considered a gift.

Enquiries about the vacancy, shortlisting and interviews:

Dr. Sankari Nagarajan.

Tel: 0161 275 7832

Email sankari.nagarajan@manchester.ac.uk

General enquiries:

Email: People.recruitment@manchester.ac.uk

Technical support:

https://jobseekersupport.jobtrain.co.uk/support/home

This vacancy will close for applications at midnight on the closing date.

Please see the link below for the Further Particulars document which contains the person specification criteria.