MRC Postdoctoral Research Scientist

£42,694 plus London allowances £5,560 per annum*

Additional allowances comprises at £1,000 lump sum settlement allowance plus a yearly Training Allowance of £850 in the first year, paid in monthly instalments. The Training Allowance increases to £1,300 in year two, and £1,800 in the third year.

3 years fixed term | Full-time |

Location:

Hammersmith London

Closing Date: 1 November 2026

Understanding how chemicals in our environment cause disease has been constrained by a fundamental lack of tools. The Tissue Biology Group is building spatial single-cell genomics technologies and high-throughput screening platforms to reveal, cell by cell, how exposures remodel tissues and drive disease. To do this, the group develops new methods for single-cell spatial multiomics, for in vitro and in vivo screening, and for the computational analysis these data demand.

We encounter thousands of chemicals over a lifetime, and for the overwhelming majority, the biological consequences are unknown. Where there is an effect, it is often recorded in the genome, epigenome, and/or transcriptome of individual cells, as somatic mutation, as altered DNA methylation, or as a shift in which clones expand and how they behave. Conventional testing approaches are too slow, too low-throughput, and often too distant from human biology to close that gap;

what is needed is the ability to screen exposures at scale, with readouts that can generate mechanistic hypotheses.

We are looking for a talented postdoctoral scientist to establish the group's exposure screening capability. The post holder will build screening platforms that make it possible to assay many exposures in parallel, and will develop the molecular and phenotypic readouts that make those screens informative. The work follows one of two strands, and which one the post holder takes will be shaped by their background and interests:

• The in vitro strand: establishing novel screening platforms using organoid, primary cell, or comparable human-relevant culture systems with multiplexed, sequencing-based readouts, suitable for testing many compounds and doses in parallel.

• The in vivo strand: establishing novel screening approaches that allow exposures to be assayed in tissue at a scale conventional study designs cannot reach. The post holder would carry out this animal work themselves and would be bringing that expertise into the group, so established hands-on in vivo experience is required for this strand, together with a UK Home Office personal licence or readiness to obtain one.

This is a method-development post with deliberately broad reach. A successful screening platform will be used by collaborating groups, and it may have a route to commercialisation. Since these readouts report on mechanism rather than on any single chemical, the same platform can be used to study mutagenesis, ageing, cancer, and drug toxicology, whatever the compound class under test.

This is a mixed wet/dry laboratory post. The successful candidate will generate their own data at the bench and take primary responsibility for its analysis, with support from the group and from the LMS core facilities in genomics, flow cytometry, light microscopy, metabolomics, whole animal physiology and imaging, and scientific computing.

As a newly established group, we can offer real scope to shape the direction of the project, alongside structured mentoring. We care about the kind of lab we are, not just the science we do. We look for curiosity and creativity, we work collaboratively and with mutual respect, and we want everyone in the group to grow as scientists and as people, with mentorship at every level and active…