There are two jobs, please see both links:

https://jobs.nhm.ac.uk/Job/JobDetail?JobId=234

https://jobs.nhm.ac.uk/Job/JobDetail?JobId=235

Both positions will be embedded in a lab whose focus is broadly the human impact of global change (e.g., climate, land-use and demographic change). We are a relatively new, friendly, inclusive lab with a diverse sets of skills and interests. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups.

More info:

1. One post-doctoral research assistant position will focus on a One Health, interdisciplinary research project set around anthropological, molecular and ecological data collection in Nigeria, with an international team of collaborators, focussing on the rodent-borne disease Lassa Fever. We are interested in examining questions around how patterns of human behaviour and rodent ecology combine to drive high-risk contact, which results in pathogens people and animals share. To achieve this, we are conducting in-depth participatory social science evaluations of people’s everyday habits and activities, measuring proximity using movement analysis and activity space mapping, and combining this with in-depth ecological surveys. We will then undertake extensive molecular survey work to understand how the presence of Lassa Virus changes over time in the different actors in the community. The post-holder will lead on the quantitative analysis of human and animal data using mechanistic and statistical models to predict cross-scale Lassa Fever transmission risk.

2. The other post-doctoral research assistant position will focus on a One Health, interdisciplinary research project set around anthropological, molecular and ecological data collection in The Gambia and Nigeria, with an international team of collaborators. We are interested in examining questions around how patterns of contact result in similarities/differences in the pathogens people and animals share. To achieve this, we are conducting in-depth participatory social science evaluations of people’s everyday habits and activities, measuring proximity using movement analysis and activity space mapping, and combining this with in-depth ecological surveys. We will then undertake extensive metagenomic work to understand the composition of shared viral communities, and follow this up with targeted, longitudinal serological data collection. The post-holder will lead on the quantitative analysis of samples, using metagenomic machine learning pipelines to identify viruses and then build similarity networks from community samples. They will also act to support a project-based cohort of four PhD students, from across the four main disciplines: social science, ecology, public health and microbiology.