Area
Pharmacy
Location
University Park
Salary
£32,080 to £35,608 per annum, depending on skills and experience (£35608 with relevant PhD).
Closing Date
Wednesday 16 September 2026
Reference
SCI519426
We are seeking a Research Associate/Fellow to join a multidisciplinary project team in the Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine in the University of Nottingham. The overall collaborative project aims to assess the performance of oral dosage forms in the gastrointestinal tract using advanced techniques such as MRI and HPLC. The successful candidate will join highly motivated and well-funded research teams across the Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.
We have recently used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique to image what happens in the bowel to tablets and capsules that people swallow to take their medicines or food supplements. Of particular relevance to this new project, we have recently followed the journey in the bowel of a capsule specially designed to ‘survive’ digestion in the stomach and reach the lower part of the bowel, before disintegrating and delivering the medicine/food supplement. This is important because certain medicines and food supplements are damaged by the harsh stomach environment and need to be taken past the stomach to be absorbed in the lower bowel.
For this new project we will image a novel type of capsules inside the bowel of healthy adult volunteers to understand where it disintegrates in the gastrointestinal tract. We plan to recruit healthy adult volunteers from the university campus for these studies. Some of the capsules will contain caffeine as a model molecule. When it is absorbed by the bowel, caffeine appears quickly in people’s saliva and as such it has been used as a simple and safe model ‘medicine’ for research studies. Capsules disintegration will be imaged by MRI, and the levels of caffeine will be quantified in the saliva samples. The pharmacokinetic parameters of caffeine will be calculated and correlated with the images obtained using the MRI.
The aims of this post are the determination of the caffeine concentrations in human saliva using HPLC techniques, pharmacokinetic modelling and simulation of the obtained saliva-concentration pharmacokinetic profiles and correlation of the obtained pharmacokinetic data to the images generated using the MRI.
This work will be based within the Division of Molecular Therapeutics and Formulation, located within the School of Pharmacy and led by Dr Pavel Geshkovich and Prof Snow Stolnik in Pharmacy, and Prof Marciani in Medicine. The candidate will be required to undertake research and day to day management of the bioanalysis and pharmacokinetics aspects of this research project, requiring a high degree of competence in one or more of the research areas listed. An aptitude for critical thinking and a flexible approach to collaborative research is vital.
Candidates should have, be close to completion of, or have equivalent experience, a PhD in Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Sciences or related discipline, together with an interest in pharmacokinetics, bioanalysis and drug delivery.
This full-time (36.25 hours/week), is offered for fixed period of 6 months, starting on 1st October 2026 (or as soon as possible thereafter).
For informal enquiries, please contact: Dr Pavel Gershkovich ([email protected]). Please note that applications sent to this address will not be considered.
