Job summary
Applications are invited for the post of Research Assistant/Research Associate to join The London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research (LCNTDR) based in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London.
The post is part of an international effort funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create a Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Modelling Consortium to facilitate the development of mathematical models in assessing whether current control interventions will meet the 2020 goals of the World Health Organisation – and if not - what extra interventions or scaling up will help achieve these goals.

Duties and responsibilities
The post holder will analyse and develop an age structured stochastic individual based simulation mathematical model to assess the impact of vaccination on the dynamics of schistosomes in individuals in combination with mass drug treatment. The model will be based on recent trials of candidate vaccines in experimental studies to protect humans against schistosome infections. The vaccine models will then be integrated into the existing deterministic and stochastic models for dynamics of human helminth infections in large-scale age and gender structured host populations undergoing regular mass drug administration interventions. The potential partially efficacious vaccine is being developed to control Schistosome infections (S mansoni and S haematobium) in sub-Saharan African countries by targeting either those most heavily infected, the whole population, or particular groups (such as school-aged children). The project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under the umbrella of the NTD Modelling Consortium, forms part of a wider programme of research on mathematical modelling of neglected tropical diseases and their control, funded by a variety of agencies.

Essential requirements
Applicants should have an MSc (for appointment to Research Assistant) or PhD (for appointment to Research Associate) or equivalent in one of the following areas: infectious disease epidemiology, population biology, mathematics, statistics, or a similarly quantitative discipline. You should have knowledge of statistical methods and software (preferably Stata or R) and research experience of working with mathematical models and statistical analysis.

Further information
This post is full time and fixed term until 31 July 2018 and will be based at the St Mary’s Campus, Paddington. Imperial College is supportive of flexible working.

Should you have any queries please contact: Clare Mylchreest (c.mylchreest@imperial.ac.uk).

The College is happy to discuss the possibility of implementing such arrangements for this post, with suitably qualified people, subject to operational requirements.