PDRA in MRI Diabetes assessment

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We are seeking an enthusiastic Research Associate (Research Associate
2) to join the Medical Imaging Team in the Division of Clinical Medicine and the INSIGNEO Institute for in silico medicine at the University of Sheffield. This 42-month position is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of the pioneering project "Vascular Computational Modelling in Chronic Kidney Disease (VASCO-CKD)".

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) affects ~10% of the global population and is most often caused by diabetes and hypertension. The VASCO-CKD project will develop a non-invasive means of differentiating these two causes, which would offer significant opportunities to improve patient outcomes by tailored management. Our approach builds on a combination of comprehensive computational modelling of the cardiovascular system, informed by extensive blood flow measurements using phase-contrast MRI in patients and healthy controls.

As the successful candidate, you will lead the core MRI activities within Work Package 2 (WP2), under the direct supervision of Prof Steven Sourbron. You will work closely with an interdisciplinary team, including an engineering Research Associate focused on model development (WP1), alongside clinicians, engineers and established public and clinical stakeholder networks (WP3).

You will be embedded within the INSIGNEO Institute, Europe's largest in silico medicine institute, providing a world-class, multidisciplinary ecosystem of over 400 clinical and engineering researchers. This role provides an outstanding opportunity to leverage your MRI skills to make a real-world clinical impact on personalised medicine.

The postholder will lead the MRI protocol development and clinical studies within Work Package 2 (WP2). Key duties include:

• Retrospectively analyse the renal phase contrast data from our EU-funded internation study iBEAt on diabetic kidney disease which includes data from over 500 patients with 4-year follow-up.
• Set up a novel extensive phase-contrast based MRI protocol on our GE scanners to measure renal blood flow and velocity at various points in the arterial trea, with an extra focus on renal vessels.
• Develop an integrated database and analysis pipeline for retrospective and prospective data.
• Set up and run a clinical study in 80 patients and healthy controls to provide extensive measurements that can inform the model development.
• Work with Research Associate 1 to apply the newly developed model directly to the data and use it to measure hidden model parameters.
• Support Research Associate 1 in the validation of the computational model, generation of virtual populations and development of in-silico clinical trials based..
• Package data, analysis pipelines, and documented models into a clean, open-access public repository hosted via Git Hub and Zenodo under open Apache 2.0 and CC-BY 4.0 licensing.
• Maintain highly effective working relationships across the interdisciplinary team, presenting key milestones at monthly alignment meetings and international conferences.
• Carry out other duties, commensurate with the grade and remit of the post.

• A PhD (or near completion/equivalent experience) in Physics, Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Computational Biomedical Imaging, or a related highly quantitative field.
  
  - Essential
  - Application
• Documented experience in MRI sequence development and sequence programming.
  
  - Essential
  - Application/Interview
• Strong background in MRI physics and processing and modelling of MRI data.
  
  - Essential
  - Application/Interview
• Experience with open-source software codebases, version control (e.g., Git Hub), and open-science data sharing standards.
  
  - Essential
  - Application
• Effective communication and interpersonal skills, with a proven ability to collaborate in multi-disciplinary research environments.
  
  - Essential
  - Application/Interview
• A…