The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is a world-leading centre for research and postgraduate education in public and global health. Our mission is to is to improve health and health equity in the UK and worldwide; working in partnership to achieve excellence in public and global health research, education and translation of knowledge into policy and practice.

The project, “Determining the importance of different locations to Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission in high tuberculosis burden settings”, is seeking to recruit a Research Fellow. The post will be based in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health. The post holder will be accountable to the Head of Department through Dr. Nicky McCreesh, the Principal Investigator.

The successful candidate will develop and analyse a mathematical model of contact patterns and Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission in adults and children. Force of infection (FOI) in children is (relatively) easy to measure, and so is often used as a proxy for overall disease incidence. The relationship between the two variables is not clear however, and will vary with contact patterns between adults and children, and the amount of disease that is due to reactivation. The successful candidate will examine the relationship between FOI in children and the incidence of TB disease in the general population. This will lead to a better understanding of the relationship between the two variables, and under what circumstances FOI in children should and should not be used as a proxy for disease incidence. This work will feed into ongoing discussions about the utility of latent LTBI surveys with WHO.

For the post-holder to be able to perform the job effectively, they will be required to have a Masters in a quantitative discipline such as mathematics, physics, statistics, bioinformatics or computational biology, or similar research experience; experience in constructing and analysing mathematical models of epidemiological, biological or other systems, as well as Proficient knowledge of a programming language for mathematical modelling such as R, Python, or C/C++. A PhD in a quantitative discipline such as mathematics, physics, statistics, bioinformatics or computational biology is desirable. Further particulars are included in the job description.

The post is based in London and will be funded until 31st January 2020. The salary will be Grade 6 on the Academic scale in the range of £39,304 - £42,674 per annum (inclusive of London Weighting). The post will be subject to the LSHTM terms and conditions of service. Annual leave entitlement is 30 working days per year. In addition to this there are discretionary “Director’s Days”. Membership of the Pension Scheme is available.