Careers at Centre for Population Neuroscience and Precision Medicine (PONS)

Applications are invited for two Lecturers/Assistant Professors to join the Centre for Population Neuroscience and Precision Medicine (PONS) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London.

1x Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Population Neuroscience to develop a research programme on the environmental influences on brain development and behavior, with a particular emphasis on the effects of urbanization. The research will involve comparative analyses of large scale neuroimaging data in Europe, India and China. Using existing UK databases (IMAGEN, UK Biobank, ALSPAC) for comparison the project seeks to investigate if environmental risk factors in industrialized countries and emerging societies shape brain structure and function, and behavior in distinct ways, and whether this may lead to different risk constellations and neurobehavioral trajectories for mental disorders, including addictions.

1x Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Computational Neuroscience to develop a research programme investigating large adolescent behavioral neuroimaging-genetics cohorts. We aim to investigate brain development and psychopathology and its genomic, epigenomic and environmental determinants to identify markers of neural processes that predict psychopathology, and allow for the development of targeted early interventions. The analyses will require state of the art data integration, stratification and prediction techniques, including deep learning methods and various sparse representational techniques. Results generated will be followed up using functional biological characterization, both in our research group (functional –omics), as well as an active international network of collaborating partners (including animal behavioral experts).

The posts offer a unique opportunity to work with a worldwide network of collaborators and develop cutting-edge approaches in rapidly growing field of population neuroscience in one of the leading research environments in Europe and the world. We are seeking talented, energetic and highly motivated individuals with a track record of the highest standard in their respective fields. They are expected to be experienced in several, but not all of the methods required in this programme.

The research is funded by the European Research Council, the European Commission, the UK-Medical Research Council, the U.S. National Institute of Health and others, and will be based on a series of recent discoveries and methodological advances published by our group in top journals including Nature, Science, Nature Neuroscience, Molecular Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry and others.

The posts will be at Fixed Term Contract for 36 months. Further opportunities for research in the future will also potentially be available. The salary will be paid at Grade 6/7, £37,075 to £45,562 per annum, Plus £2,923 per annum London Allowance.

For an informal discussion to find out more about the roles please contact Prof Gunter Schumann: gunter.schumann@kcl.ac.uk

Please click here to apply.