About Us
We are a world-class visitor attraction and leading science research centre. We use the Museum's unique collections and our unrivalled expertise to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today. We care for more than 80 million objects spanning billions of years and welcome more than five million visitors annually and 16 million visits to our website.
Today the Museum is more relevant and influential than ever. By attracting people from a range of backgrounds to work for us, we can continue to look at the world with fresh eyes and find new ways of doing things.
We employ 1100 staff in a variety of roles, all united by our vision of a future where people and planet thrive. We need everyone to have the passion and drive to help us with our mission to create advocates for our planet and inspire millions to care about the natural world.
Diversity and inclusion matter to us.
Our vision is of a future where both people and the planet thrive. Diversity is one of our core values and we strive to build a workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging. All new staff who join us learn about the importance of diversity and inclusion to the Museum and how to contribute to creating an inclusive environment.
We know we have more to do, but we are committed to ensuring that everyone who works at the Museum feels they can thrive and feel valued and respected.
About the role
A BBSRC-funded PDRA position is available for 3 years working on “Neurons of the exceptionally disparate and varied retinas of snakes: diversity, connectivity, and evolution” with PI Dr David Gower at the NHM London. The position is a key role in a molecular genetics project, focusing on the analysis and interpretation of newly generated (especially single-cell) RNAseq data. Snakes are already known to have exceptional diversity of types and complements of outer-retinal photoreceptors (rods and cones). This project aims to discover how this relates to the diversity and wiring of inner-retinal neurons, and to test hypotheses about the evolvability and adaptive evolution of vertebrate retinas more broadly. The overall project is a joint award with FAPESP (with co-PI Dr Einat Hauzman, University of São Paulo, Brazil) and will integrate data from immunohistochemistry, electron microscopy connectomics and molecular genetics.
About you
We are looking for an enthusiastic, bioinformatics-skilled Postdoctoral Researcher who holds a PhD in sensory and/or evolutionary biology, including working with molecular genetic data, ideally of non-model organisms. Postgraduate and/or professional experience with single-cell and/or single-nucleus RNAseq data is essential, including experience developing and implementing bioinformatics pipelines and conducting downstream computational analyses to identify molecularly distinct cell types. Your role will also include developing and maintaining analytical workflows and large-scale datasets, hosting code on publicly accessible repositories, and delivering (at least technical contributions to) presentations and publications.
You will be working as part of a team led by Dr David Gower (NHM) and Dr Einat Hauzman (University of São Paulo) and project partners in Bonn’s Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology of Behaviour. It will be expected that you have excellent communication skills in English (both verbal and written). This a time-bound post, so you will need to work at pace and respect fixed deadlines that come with grant-funded research.
If you enjoy working collaboratively on interdisciplinary, novel, challenging projects and are motivated by the opportunity to contribute to internationally leading research, you should thrive in this role. We are looking for someone who combines technical excellence with curiosity, initiative and a commitment to delivering high-quality research.
Thriving at the Museum: the way we work
We are proud to work at the Museum and have identified the qualities we all need to embody to reach our shared ambition. This sits alongside the Museum’s values and forms the framework for the way we work.
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What we offer
- 27.5 days holiday plus 8 bank holidays (full time equivalent)
- Generous defined contribution Natural History Museum Pension Scheme (employer contribution 4 - 10%)
- Season ticket, bicycle and rental loan
- Life insurance
- Free admission to our exhibitions and many other paid exhibitions at museums, galleries and institutions across London and the UK.
- Staff discount at our Museum shops and cafes
- We offer a wide variety of training initiatives and opportunities to build skills. Investing in staff development is important to us, and we are ambitious about helping staff to grow and fulfil their potential.
- Affordable membership to the Civil Service Sports Council which offers a range of benefits including an extensive list of special offers and reduced entry fees at a selection of cinema chains, theme parks, theatres, retailers and supermarkets. It also provides entry to up to 300 English Heritage sites and other national treasures. For more details, visit https://www.cssc.co.uk
- Membership to our Sports and Social Association (for a small fee), which includes access to our in-house gym and clubs such as football, softball, table tennis and tennis and classes in Middle Eastern dance, yoga and Tai Chi
Hybrid working
We are working towards a vision where both people and planet thrive, and nothing gives a greater connection with this, than seeing first-hand, the visitors, scientific research and collections that all of our work is inspired by and working side by side with the teams delivering the visitor experience and events. We also recognise the benefits and flexibility that hybrid working brings. We operate a hybrid working model that requires regular, weekly attendance for this role, with the precise pattern of days on site and worked from home to be agreed with your manager.
