CAREERS
We are building an experienced and diverse team, where individuality is celebrated, good working culture is prioritised, and team members can learn and progress. We are seeking to grow our team by finding people who share our vision and want to help us bring discoveries to life.
We’re part of the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge, located on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Our Institute provides a unique working environment, with start-up businesses, academics and pharma companies working side by side across office and laboratory space.
Our current vacancies are listed below. If you have questions about any of our roles, or want to know more about our working culture, we would love to hear from you. Email hr@milner.cam.ac.uk.
Join the Frame Shift Teams
Senior ML Researcher (Genomics), Cosyne Therapeutics
CoSyne Therapeutics is a computational drug discovery company that uses genetic and computational systems to develop next-generation medicines. The company’s first goal is to create a new class of drugs to treat the deadliest form of human brain cancer: Glioblastoma Multiforme. Our novel platform allows us to identify vulnerabilities in cells that no other company or academic institution has done before.
CoSyne recently closed a substantial seed funding round from industry-leading investors and the company is looking to grow the functional genomics and machine learning team. The Senior Machine Learning Researcher will be a key member of the AI and functional genomics teams and will help develop state-of-the-art machine learning methods for the discovery of novel drug targets. Working with the AI, bioinformatics and wet lab teams you will be responsible for the development of novel computational analysis frameworks to process the significant volume of data arising from our in-house functional genomic experiments.
The successful candidate will join an enthusiastic and collaborative team based in our Soho London office. As part of a well-funded start-up, the role holder will have all the resources necessary to make the science work, will have excellent opportunities to grow their skills, and will work with a truly fantastic team to develop therapeutics to treat currently incurable diseases.
Working closely with ML researchers, your main activities will involve:
- Create and develop innovative tools to mine CoSyne’s diverse data sets to find novel drug targets that will impact patients’ lives.
- Implement novel machine learning solutions for target identification.
- Develop robust model validation pipelines and evaluation frameworks in domains where benchmarking is hard in the absence of ground truth.
- Gathering and enacting on technical requirements from the bioinformatics team to build and maintain our genomics data analysis pipelines
The requirements for this position include:
- 4 or more years’ experience as a machine learning researcher.
- MSc in Computer Science/AI/Mathematics/Physics or another relevant field.
- Curious and creative approach to work and someone who is a self-starter.
- Experience implementing machine learning algorithms in TensorFlow and/or Pytorch
- Good understanding on machine learning methods.
- Be kind.
It is not required, but it would be great if you have any of the following:
- Experience working with genomic or genetic data (e.g., expression profiling, WGS or other functional genomic data).
- Experience working in a multidisciplinary team.
This role would suit someone who is masters level educated in machine learning/computer science who has hands on commercial experience as an ML engineer and is looking to move up to a more senior role. We are looking for someone who has ideally deployed infrastructure on the cloud and some experience working with genetic or genomic data.
What We Offer
- As an early employee of the company, you will be involved in every aspect of the business and help set the direction/culture as we grow.
- The opportunity to work at the cutting edge of AI and drug discovery.
- Working in a highly multidisciplinary team across AI, wet lab, and bioinformatics.
- Membership to CoSyne’s Equity scheme.
- All the perks of a start-up – highly competitive salaries, great IT, team dinners/socials, flexible working, flat structure, and a fun and dynamic work environment
Our mission is to help patients with devastating diseases. Everything else is secondary.
We interview on a rolling basis and so this role will be filled when we find the right candidate.
For more information and to apply for this position please click here
Senior Cheminformatics Scientist, Cosyne Therapeutics
CoSyne Therapeutics is a computational drug discovery company that uses genetic and computational systems to develop next-generation medicines. The company’s first goal is to create a new class of drugs to treat the deadliest form of human brain cancer: Glioblastoma Multiforme. Our novel platform allows us to identify vulnerabilities in cells that no other company or academic institution has done before.
CoSyne recently closed a substantial seed funding round from industry-leading investors and the company is looking to grow the functional genomics and machine learning team. The Senior Cheminformatics Scientist will be a key member of the AI and computational chemistry teams and will help develop state-of-the-art machine learning methods for the discovery of novel drugs. Working with the AI, bioinformatics and wet lab teams you will be responsible for the development of computational analysis frameworks to support and validate our ML models in chemistry: you will be exposed to the significant volume of data arising from our AI drug discovery programs and will be responsible for setting the standards to which our AI models are held. You will also be involved in our drug discovery programs to help support the medicinal chemists in their work designing novel drugs for our drug targets.
The successful candidate will join an enthusiastic and collaborative team based in our Soho London office. As part of a well-funded start-up, the role holder will have all the resources necessary to make the science work, will have excellent opportunities to grow their skills, and will work with a truly fantastic team to develop therapeutics to treat currently incurable diseases.
Reporting directly to the CTO and working closely with ML researchers, your main activities will involve:
- Create and develop innovative tools to support our ML for drug design efforts and set the benchmarks to define success in our modelling work.
- Help implement and productionise our state-of-the-art AI models in chemistry and the tools we use for drug design.
- Develop robust model validation pipelines and evaluation frameworks in domains where benchmarking is hard in the absence of ground truth.
- Gathering and enacting on technical requirements from the medicinal chemistry work to build the highest quality models for drug design that meet the drug discovery needs of the business.
- Help build and validate chemistry datasets to allow high quality model production.
The requirements for this position include:
- 4 or more years’ experience as a cheminformatics scientist.
- MSc in Chemistry/Computer Science or similar relevant discipline.
- Curious and creative approach to work and someone who is a self-starter.
- Experience working with ML scientists and communicating chemistry principles to an interdisciplinary team.
- Experience working with chemistry datasets.
- Experience with chemistry packages such as RDKit.
- Good understanding of methods to represent chemistry to ML models.
- A good understanding of how molecules interact with proteins.
- Be kind.
It is not required, but it would be great if you have any of the following:
- ML for chemistry property prediction.
- Generative ML methods for chemistry design and optimisation.
- Molecular Dynamics experience.
This role would suit someone who is masters level educated in chemistry or computer science, who has hands-on commercial experience as a cheminformatics scientist and is looking to move up to a more senior role. We are looking for someone who has experience working with AI scientists in building models for chemistry property prediction, drug-target interaction prediction and small molecule optimisation.
What We Offer
- As an early employee of the company, you will be involved in every aspect of the business and help set the direction/culture as we grow.
- The opportunity to work at the cutting edge of AI and drug discovery.
- Working in a highly multidisciplinary team across AI, wet lab, chem- and bioinformatics.
- Membership to CoSyne’s Equity scheme.
- All the perks of a start-up – highly competitive salaries, great IT, team dinners/socials, flexible working, flat structure, and a fun and dynamic work environment
Our mission is to help patients with devastating diseases. Everything else is secondary.
We interview on a rolling basis and so this role will be filled when we find the right candidate.
For more information and to apply for this position please click here
Join the Pathania Lab Team
Postdoctoral Research Associate (Fixed Term), Pathania Lab
The Pathania lab aims to unravel the mechanisms underlying glioma development and therapy resistance. Current projects in the lab involve characterising the mechanism of resistance to targeted therapies, the role of heterogeneity in disease development and therapy failure, and the role of the tumour microenvironment in the context of various oncogenic mutations and disease subtypes. We are now seeking an experienced and motivated Postdoctoral Research Associate for a project funded for three years in the first instance.
The project will involve studying the role of senescence and tumour microenvironmental interactions in various mouse models of glioma, a type of lethal and incurable brain tumour, as part of a collaborative programme of work conducted between Cambridge, Imperial, ICR and UCL. Since senescent cells have been shown to promote tumour development and are therapeutically tractable in cancer models, including brain tumours (see PMIDs 37451272, 37267953, 29670296, and 35241831), the aim of this project is to uncover how interactions between glioma cells and senescent cells in the microenvironment contribute to tumour initiation, maintenance, and the response to treatments such as radio and chemotherapy.
The role will involve a substantial amount of in vivo work so prior expertise in using mouse models¿ in either cancer or neurobiology research, is essential. In addition, expertise in techniques like primary cell culture, confocal microscopy, biochemistry (including IP/ChIP), FACS/flow cytometry, and single-cell epi/genomics is highly desirable. Knowledge of orthotopic engraftment of cells or virus into the brain using stereotaxic coordinates would be advantageous but is not essential, as training for this is available. These techniques will be important for investigating tumour samples from syngeneic and patient-derived xenograft models of various genotypes, with the aim of identifying and characterising senescent and non-senescent cells, tumour cells, and stromal cells, and deconvolving their effects on tumour growth, latency, and treatment response. The work will be supervised by Dr Manav Pathania and will be based at The Milner Institute and the Department of Oncology. The lab is also affiliated with the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, the CRUK Cambridge Institute and the CRUK Children’s Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence. Productive engagement and collaboration with groups based at UCL, Imperial and ICR is expected.
Applicants should hold a PhD in cancer biology or neurobiology, or be close to the completion of their degree. Candidates that have a strong background in two of the following three broad areas of expertise are encouraged to apply: (1) mouse models of cancer or neurodevelopmental disorders, (2) FACS/flow cytometry-based characterisation of tumour/tissue samples, or (3) single-cell multiomics and epigenomics.
The successful applicant will have the opportunity to develop a basic science and multidisciplinary approach to translational cancer research. They will have a strong publication record and an excellent aptitude for research and career development. We are especially looking for applicants with a self-starter mentality, who combine a perceptive and resourceful approach with an ability to work well both in a group setting as well as independently. A proven capacity to design, execute, and interpret your own experiments is essential. The ability to think creatively and develop workaround approaches when faced with challenges that arise while conducting research is highly desirable.
Informal enquiries can be addressed to Dr Manav Pathania mp915@cam.ac.uk or oncologyhr@admin.cam.ac.uk.
Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 3 years in the first instance.
Click the ‘Apply’ button below to register an account with our recruitment system (if you have not already) and apply online.
Applicants must have (or be close to obtaining) a PhD.
Appointment at Research Associate level is dependent on having a PhD. Those who have submitted but not yet received their PhD will initially be appointed as a Research Assistant (Grade 5, Point 38 £32,982) moving to Research Associate (Grade 7) upon confirmation of your PhD award.
Please ensure that you upload a covering letter and CV in the Upload section of the online application. The covering letter should outline reasons why you would like to be involved in the project, key areas of expertise, future goals/career ambitions and how you match the criteria for the post. If you upload any additional documents which have not been requested, we will not be able to consider these as part of your application.
Please include details of your referees, including email address and phone number, one of which must be your most recent line manager.
Closing date: 27th November 2023
Date of interview: To be confirmed
Please quote reference RD38787 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy.
The University actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion and encourages applications from all sections of society.
The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK.
Further information
For more information and to apply for this position please click here
