Research Associate/ Senior Research Associate in Population Genetics and Epidemiology

We are seeking a talented individual to develop new methodology for population demography and its relationship to phenotype and disease, working within MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU) at the University of Bristol, working with Dr Daniel Lawson in the School of Social and Community Medicine and the Department of Statistics.

This research involves working on the border of genetics and epidemiology to develop new methods for understanding human genetics and phenotype data. You will develop new methods to detect, understand and exploit population structure in the context of selection and functional properties of genes. Populations for which we have data are growing in both scale and worldwide diversity coverage. This work will focus on using the genetic history of populations to learn things of biological and epidemiological relevance. The approach will involve population genetics, potentially utilising recent advances in fine-scale population structure detection using chromosome painting; see for example Leslie et al 2015 Nature 519:309–314.

Exploitation of such tools in an epidemiological setting is the goal for this post. The focus will primarily be targeted to GWAS, causal inference via Mandelian Randomization, or selection. The structure of intermediate phenotypes such as methylation, metabolites and other ‘omic data is also of interest, where these are available for multiple genetically diverse cohorts and hence examinable from the perspective of population genetics.

Name, tel no and email details for informal contact/s: Daniel Lawson

dan.lawson@bristol.ac.uk
0117 331 3376

The University is committed to creating and sustaining a fully inclusive culture.  We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and communities.