Bioinformatician, BBSRC Snake Retinas

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We employ 1100 staff in a variety of roles, all united by our vision of a future where people and planet thrive. We need everyone to have the passion and drive to help us with our mission to create advocates for our planet and inspire millions to care about the natural world.

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We know we have more to do, but we are committed to ensuring that everyone who works at the Museum feels they can thrive and feel valued and respected.

A BBSRC-funded PDRA position is available for 3 years working on “Neurons of the exceptionally disparate and varied retinas of snakes: diversity, connectivity, and evolution” with PI Dr David Gower at the NHM London. The position is a key role in a molecular genetics project, focusing on the analysis and interpretation of newly generated (especially single‑cell) RNAseq data. Snakes are already known to have exceptional diversity of types and complements of outer‑retinal photoreceptors (rods and cones).

This project aims to discover how this relates to the diversity and wiring of inner‑retinal neurons, and to test hypotheses about the evolvability and adaptive evolution of vertebrate retinas more broadly. The overall project is a joint award with FAPESP (with co‑PI Dr Einat Hauzman, University of São Paulo, Brazil) and will integrate data from immunohistochemistry, electron microscopy connectomics and molecular genetics.

We are looking for an enthusiastic, bioinformatics‑skilled Postdoctoral Researcher who holds a PhD in sensory and/or evolutionary biology, including working with molecular genetic data, ideally of non‑model organisms. Postgraduate and/or professional experience with single‑cell and/or single‑nucleus RNAseq data is essential, including experience developing and implementing bioinformatics pipelines and conducting downstream computational analyses to identify molecularly distinct cell types. Your role will also include developing and maintaining analytical workflows and large‑scale datasets, hosting code on publicly accessible repositories, and delivering (at least technical contributions to) presentations and publications.

You will be working as part of a team led by Dr David Gower (NHM) and Dr Einat Hauzman (University of São Paulo) and project partners in Bonn’s Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology of Behaviour. It will be expected that you have excellent communication skills in English (both verbal and written). This a time‑bound post, so you will need to work at pace and respect fixed deadlines that come with grant‑funded research.

If you enjoy working collaboratively on interdisciplinary, novel, challenging projects and are motivated by the opportunity to contribute to internationally leading research, you should thrive in this role. We are looking for someone who combines technical excellence with curiosity, initiative and a commitment to delivering high‑quality research.

We are proud to work at the Museum and have identified the qualities we all need to embody to reach our shared ambition. This sits alongside the Museum’s values and forms the framework for the way we work.

• 27.5 days holiday plus 8 bank holidays (full time equivalent)
• Generous…