Research Fellow

Our mission is to maximise and advocate for the holistic health of all children, young people and the adults they will become, through world-class research, education and public engagement. The UCL GOS ICH, together with its clinical partner Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, forms the largest concentration of children's health research outside North America. The 2024-29 GOS ICH strategy focuses on its five scientific programmes. GOS ICH's activities include active engagement with children and families, to ensure that our work is relevant and appropriate to their needs. GOS ICH generates the funding for our research by setting out our proposals in high quality applications to public, charitable and industrial funding bodies and disseminates the results of our research by publication in the medical and scientific literature, to clinicians, policy makers and the wider public. The Institute offers world-class education and training across a wide range of teaching and life learning programmes which address the needs of students and professional groups who are interested in and undertaking work relevant to child health. GOS ICH holds an Athena SWAN Charter Gold Award.

There are several inherited metabolic disorders that affect the lysine catabolic pathway, such as the vitamin B6-responsive epilepsy disorder ALDH7A1-deficiency. These disorders lead to an accumulation of metabolites thought to be toxic to the body, and in the case of ALDH7A1-deficiency, result in neurodevelopmental delay. The successful applicant will develop the natural history of ALDH7A1-deficiency. In this role, you will work closely with a multidisciplinary team to map the progression, clinical features, and outcomes of the disorder over time, with the ultimate aim of informing better diagnostic, therapeutic, and management strategies. The salary offered in this post is £43,374 pa and is funded for 12 months in the first instance.

You will have a MB BS or nursing degree or equivalent allied medical professional undergraduate degree. You will also have a PhD or have completed a similar period of training in a Biological Sciences subject post degree. We are seeking a detail-orientated individual. You will play a critical role in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting longitudinal data to identify patterns, trends, and key stages in the progression of ALDH7A1-deficiency. This research will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the disorder's course, helping to guide clinical practice and patient care. You will have experience of a healthcare setting and knowledge of good clinical practice as well as having previously developed a clinical database. The successful individual will have experience of applying statistical methods to the analysis of data and ideally will have worked in a research setting previously. In addition to carrying out the natural history study, you will be involved in reporting the progress of the research to the funders of this grant on a monthly basis as well as communicating the results in scientific presentations.