Research Assistant/Associate

We are excited to launch this new opportunity for a Research Assistant/Associate position within the Digital Health Innovation in Ageing and Neurodegeneration (DIAN) research group, as part of Newcastle’s NIHR Digital Health Theme. You will join an interdisciplinary group of researchers based in Newcastle in the Health Innovation Neighbourhood. You will be working with Dr Ríona McArdle and her team to better understand and support mobility impairments in people living with dementia.

We are seeking a highly motivated Research Assistant/Associate with a strong background in quantitative methods and an interest in digital health and dementia. This position will be a full-time 18-month fixed-term post and provide an excellent opportunity for an early career researcher interested in complex data analysis of digital mobility outcomes in dementia and neurodegenerative disorders.

Your role will be working on National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) projects focused on characterising and understanding mobility, including gait and ambulatory activity, in people living with different types of dementia. This is a fantastic opportunity to develop your skillset in digital health and dementia, and you will be supported to produce peer-reviewed publications throughout this post. The main project involves a longitudinal research cohort using wearable technology to measure real-world digital mobility outcomes in people living with dementia over three years. We are interested understanding how mobility changes over time in dementia and what socio-ecological and disease-related factors influence that change.

We follow the Researcher Development Concordat. We enable all colleagues to fulfil their research potential regardless of career stage. This commitment secures our thriving research culture and vibrant research environment. Our offer to each individual and their researcher development includes mentoring, annual research planning discussions, pooled research funding to support career development and research activities, peer review support for the development of research and innovation funding applications.

We want you to feel confident when applying for a position with Newcastle University. If you’d like an informal discussion to clarify any points, please contact Dr Ríona McArdle: riona.mcardle@ncl.ac.uk. We are committed to making the process accessible to everyone and can provide additional support to adjustments to meet your needs.

Please provide your CV and a cover letter with examples of how you meet the essential and desirable criteria (available on the university's website, accessed by the 'Apply' button). In particular, please provide details of your knowledge and application of statistical techniques, particularly multi-level or repeated measures, and any experience working with wearable sensor data, such as movement analysis and signal processing.

Your role will include:

• Processing existing wearable sensor data to derive gait and activity outcomes by applying existing algorithms.
• Developing and managing a complex dataset, bringing together longitudinal clinical and cognitive data from multiple sites together with the processed wearable sensor data.
• Conduct longitudinal statistical analysis to answer key research questions.
• Prepare reports and write publications for peer-reviewed journals.

We aim to hold interviews in late August.