Research Associate in In Vitro Models of Early Development (10402)
Rosalind Franklin Institute
The Rosalind Franklin Institute (the Franklin) is a technology institute established by the UK Government as a unique centre committed to advancing tools that are needed to transform healthcare in the future.
The Institute brings together researchers in life and physical sciences, and engineering, to develop a spectrum of tools which we will use to image, interpret and intervene in biological systems. These insights will speed up the discovery of new medicines, help find new diagnostics and contribute to a deeper understanding of human health and disease. Our Science Strategy seeks to focus the Franklin’s research and unite our researchers around our Technology Innovation Challenges and Life Science Challenges. For more information on the Franklin’s Challenges click here.
As a Research Associate at the Franklin, you will bring scientific knowledge and skills to deliver a specific research project and/or you will bring independent, creative science, or specific skills to a team delivering a project or program. Through this work, you will build scientific independence, develop new science and leadership skills, and establish a growing reputation externally.
In this specific role, you will establish and maintain stem cell and blastoid culture systems that model key cell fate transitions during early human development. You will generate robust, reproducible biological systems that can be interrogated across molecular, cellular and structural scales, working closely with RFI experts in mass spectrometry, cryo-electron tomography, imaging, data science and AI. The appointee will ensure that these models are suitable for high-quality, multimodal data generation, enabling the identification of candidate molecular and structural determinants of cell fate decisions. They will also play a central role in closing the prediction–validation loop: using computational predictions derived from these datasets to design, optimise and execute targeted validation experiments. More broadly, this role will help establish a biological testbed for understanding how cell fate is specified, maintained and redirected during early development. By linking stem cell and blastoid models with mass spectrometry, cryo-ET and AI-driven analysis, the work will contribute to the wider goal of building predictive, experimentally grounded models of how molecular organisation gives rise to cellular identity and developmental transitions.