Research Assistant/Associate

Newcastle University - Faculty of Medical Sciences

Placed On: 17th March 2026
Closes: 31st March 2026
Job Ref: 29117

We are a world class research-intensive university. We deliver teaching and learning of the highest quality. We play a leading role in economic, social and cultural development of the North East of England. Attracting and retaining high-calibre people is fundamental to our continued success.

Salary
Research Assistant - £33,002 to £34,610 per annum.
Research Associate - £35,608 to £46,049 per annum.

The Role
We are looking to recruit a motivated researcher interested in an exciting multi-disciplinary translational neuroscience project funded by the LifeArc charity with the aim of developing a rapid, sensitive and entirely non-invasive diagnostic test for motor neuron disease (MND). You will join a multi-disciplinary team of neuroscientists, MR physicists, neuroradiologists and computer scientists and will be primarily responsible for conducting multi-channel surface electromyography recordings in patients with motor neuron disease (MND).

Motor neurone disease (MND) – also known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) - is a rapidly disabling and fatal neurodegenerative disease affecting 1 in 10,000. The disease affects people at all ages, but more commonly affects individuals in their 50s and 60s. It is characterised by progressive, painless muscle wasting and weakness, which ultimately leads to immobility, respiratory failure and death. Underlying this devastating condition is the progressive loss of skeletal motor units (a single motor axon and all of the muscle fibres that this innervates). Current diagnostic tests are invasive, relatively insensitive, and available only in larger centres, meaning that patients still typically wait up to 12 months to get a diagnosis. This matters because it delays access to life-prolonging treatments and prevents early recruitment of patients to clinical trials of new therapies.

Recently high-density surface electromyography (HD-SEMG) has emerged as a potential diagnostic test capable of detecting the early stages of motor unit dysfunction. The aim of this project is to build on this work to develop HD-SEMG into a rapid, sensitive and entirely non-invasive diagnostic test for MND.

You will arrange for patients to attend HD-SEMG sessions, perform the experiments and analyse the neurophysiological data. Data analysis will involve data from this project as well as other projects currently underway and will require the use of custom analysis scripts running in the MATLAB environment. Finally, you will be responsible for producing publication-quality figures illustrating our findings, and for writing the first draft of manuscripts reporting the results.

This post is full-time, fixed-term for a period until 1st April 2028 in the first instance.

For informal enquiries contact: Professor Roger Whittaker - Roger.Whittaker@newcastle.ac.uk.

Find out more about the Faculty of Medical Sciences here: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/medical-sciences/.

Find out more about our Research Institutes here: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/medical-sciences/research/institutes/.

As part of our commitment to career development for research colleagues, the University has developed 3 levels of research role profiles. These profiles set out firstly the generic competences and responsibilities expected of role holders at each level and secondly the general qualifications and experiences needed for entry at a particular level.