Postdoctoral Research Scientist; Data Science

Postdoctoral Research Scientist (Data Science)

Job Title Postdoctoral Research Scientist (Data Science) Post Number 1006222 Closing Date 17 Nov 2026 Grade SC6 Starting Salary Salary: £39,000-£46,500

Funding End Date 30 Apr 2028 Hours per week 37 Project Title Gut microbial colonization and adaptation to the human host. Months Duration 20

Applications are invited for a Research Scientist to join the Laboratory of Prof Hildebrand in the Food, Microbes and Health programme at Quadram Institute Bioscience (QIB), Norwich, UK.

In this project we will investigate relationships between diet, the human gut microbiome and mental health across more than 20 European cohorts within the NUTRIMIND consortium. The successful applicant will harmonise large-scale dietary, metagenomic, metabolomic and mental-health datasets, establish reproducible statistical workflows, apply mediation approaches to investigate potential microbiome-mediated relationships, and develop machine-learning models to identify generalisable patterns using cross-validation. Building on earlier work from the hosting group (doi:
10.1016/j.chom.; doi:
10.1038/s-5; doi:
10.1016/j.chom.), the project will identify microbial communities, strains and genes associated with diet-microbiome-mentalbhealth relationships.

The successful applicant will work within a diverse, international consortium (NUTRIMIND, ), bringing together microbiome researchers, nutrition scientists, clinicians, data scientists and machine-learning experts across Europe. The applicant will also contribute to the Flavour Ferm project (https://(Use the "Apply for this Job" box below).), developing bioinformatic pipelines for fermented food microbiomes. Close interactions with consortium partners are encouraged through workshops and consortium meetings.

The ideal candidate is experienced in bioinformatics, (meta) genomic data analysis and microbiology. Specifically, knowledge in analysing microbial communities, machine learning, AI, statistical modelling and comparative genomics will be of benefit. Experience with large-scale or multi-omics datasets, R or Python, and reproducible computational workflows would also be advantageous. Specialised skills will be developed through mentorship and collaboration.

Long-term, this research will contribute to understanding how diet and the gut microbiome interact to influence mental wellbeing, while developing computational approaches for translating complex microbiome and nutrition data into robust, generalisable biological insights.

The post holder will work closely with other group members, the line managers Prof Falk Hildebrand and Dr Maria Traka, as well as key collaborators from the Traka group at QIB, the Jozef Stefan Institute, U Cork, U Wageningen, Austrian Institute of Technology, among other NUTRIMIND and Flavour Ferm partners.

The applicant is expected to help in the supervision of junior group members and to represent the group at trainings and will have direct access to established in vitro fermentation models, advanced sequencing facilities, state-of-the-art QIB laboratories, local food databanks with integrated AI systems, as well as one of UK’s largest HPC cluster.

• Integrate public metagenomes and metabolomes with consortia generated data 30
• Statistical framework for microbiome-diet and microbiome-mental health associations 20
• Mediation analysis of diet-microbiome-mental health interactions 20
• Develop AI framework to interrogate metagenomes and diet-microbiome-health associations 20
• Support group with tasks such as outreach, student supervision, writing grants 5
• Represent group at collaborative meetings (Flavour Faerm, Nutrimind) 5
• As agreed with line manager,…