Research Associate in Machine-Learning Modelling of 2-D and 3-D Images (10406)

Rosalind Franklin Institute

Closing date
30 August 2026 12:00am
Location
Harwell, Didcot
Salary
From £39,500 per annum (depending on skills and experience)

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.

This is an exciting research opportunity to join the VirtuAI Cell project which aims to develop virtual mapping of intracellular contents of biological cells. This leads to the ultimate goal of running in-silico cell simulations that use such mappings to model how the dynamics of intracellular contents may modulate in response to various types of cell disturbances; e.g., due to the injection of a drug molecule; or the intracellular growth of cancer promoting mutations, the checking of which one could model to predict new routes towards preventative cancer.

The Research Associate will focus on developing machine-learning (ML) approaches that automatically segment and classify cellular species from experimental 2-D microscopy and 3-D tomography data, to help build a virtual mapping of biological cells. The role-holder will also explore new ways to represent data to more efficiently identify cellular species and enable better downstream ML modelling tasks. The work may also involve designing, building and deploying new feature selection and optimisation strategies for the ML modelling of cellular data. More generally, this role offers a great opportunity for an ML expert to become a valued member of a highly interdisciplinary, challenge-focused project team that aims to solve a global research challenge.

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.