Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging – INTERNAL ONLY

Job id: 083447. Salary: £43,205 – £50,585 per annum, including London Weighting Allowance.

Posted: 29 January 2024. Closing date: 02 February 2024.

Business unit: Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine. Department: Biomedical Engineering.

Contact details:Dr Martin Bishop. [email protected]

Location: St Thomas’ Campus. Category: Research.

Job description

A post-doctoral research associate position is available at King’s College London within the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, located at the St Thomas Hospital. King’s College London, with its 200 years of heritage, is recognised today as a world-leading research university.   

The post holder will participate in a recently funded project on the development of a novel guidance approach to ablation of cardiac arrhythmia by combining imaging data, implanted device electrograms and computational model. The applicant will focus on the development of novel cardiac MRI techniques for patients with implanted devices. This will involve the development of novel MR acquisition and reconstruction approaches at both high (1.5T) and low (0.55T) fields, publishing in high impact journals and presenting findings at international conferences. The applicant will join an interdisciplinary environment at King’s College London with a strong experience and expertise in cardiac MRI, computational modelling and ablation of cardiac arrhythmias. The post-holder will work under the supervision of Dr. Sébastien Roujol (imaging lead) and Dr. Martin Bishop (PI of the overall research programme). 

The successful candidate should have a PhD in biomedical engineering, medical physics or related fields. The candidate should have a strong experience and track record in at least one of the following: MRI sequence development and/or MR-reconstruction/image processing techniques (preferably using the Siemens IDEA environment).

This post will be offered on a fixed-term contract for 1 year.

This is a full-time post – 100% full time equivalent.

Key responsibilities

• Lead research in developing, testing and evaluating novel acquisition and reconstruction techniques for cardiac MRI of patients with devices.
• Work with clinical colleagues to implement the methods developed and participate in early studies to evaluate them and make any modifications required
• Undertake research of high quality.
• Disseminate the methods developed and results obtained to the wider scientific community in suitable meetings and publications.
• Present information on research progress and outcomes to bodies supervising research, e.g. steering groups.
• Prioritize projects and tasks required to carry out the objectives.
• Translate key objectives into a discrete set of achievable tasks.
• Write up research work for publication.
• Attend training courses, seminars, and conferences and give talks and seminars as required.
• To liaise with other scientific and technical staff to solve technical problems.

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

Skills, knowledge, and experience

Essential criteria  

PhD in biomedical engineering, medical physics or related fields (at or near completion) *

Experience in MR image acquisition and reconstruction

Experience in image/signal processing

Experience in MATLAB and C++

Presenting scientific research in the form of papers, posters and oral presentations

* Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6. 

Desirable criteria

Experience in MR pulse sequence development (Siemens environment preferred)

Experience in phantom, volunteer and patient scanning with MR imaging

Applying specialist knowledge in the context of medical imaging

Experience in multidisciplinary research