Fellowship Hosting Opportunities in Biological and Behavioural Sciences

Fellowship Hosting Opportunities in Biological and Behavioural Sciences

Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences (SBBS)

The School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences (SBBS) at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) invites expressions of interest from outstanding postdoctoral researchers worldwide who are seeking to apply for externally funded research fellowships.
We are keen to attract ambitious early career researchers who wish to establish research independence and are looking for a supportive institutional environment in which to develop competitive fellowship applications.

Fellowship Schemes
The UK provides a strong and diverse funding landscape for early career researchers. We particularly encourage applications supporting research independence such as:
• NERC Independent Research Fellowships (IRF)
• Royal Society University Research Fellowships (URF)
• Wellcome Trust Early-Career and Career Development Awards
• UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF). Please note this fellowship is subject to university wide demand management.
• BBSRC / MRC early independence research fellowships

Candidate Support and Engagement
SBBS offers a collaborative and interdisciplinary research environment organised across three academic departments; Biology, Biochemistry and Psychology and four discipline-spanning research centres (see below). Fellowship candidates receive tailored, end-to-end support, including one-to-one academic mentoring, internal peer review, and structured interview preparation including mock interviews. Fellows will also benefit from access to world-class technical facilities, vibrant research networks across QMUL, and opportunities to engage with the university’s diverse academic community. Longer-term academic opportunities may be available on a case-by-case basis.

Candidate Profile
Applicants should have an excellent academic track record, a visionary project aligned with funder remit and priorities and clear potential to develop an independent research programme aligned with SBBS research strengths.

Strategic Recruitment Areas
We welcome all applications, particularly those aligning with one or more of the following strategic priorities across our research centres:
• Centre for Brain and Behaviour: Brain health and wellbeing across the lifespan, decision-making and adaptation in a changing world, and cognition and neuroscience across humans and other animal models.
• Centre for Evolutionary and Functional Genomics: Computational and AI-enabled approaches to evolutionary and functional genomics, proteomics, and environmental DNA.
• Centre for Biodiversity and Sustainability: AI and biodiversity, ecology and ecosystem resilience in the context of environmental change, food security, plant science, and community and metacommunity ecology
• Centre for Molecular Cell Biology: Cell dynamics across scales, chromosome and RNA biology, photosynthesis and plant biology, bacteria–environment interactions, and synthetic biology, along with advanced imaging from super-resolution to cryo-electron microscopy/tomography.

In addition to a Biological Services Unit (BSU), staff have access to QMUL's High Performance Compute cluster, and state of the art facilities that support our research:
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sbbs/research/facilities/

Further Information
Details of the application process, research areas, and guidance on identifying potential hosts are available at:
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sbbs/research/research-fellowships/
Please note that this is not a funded position. Rather, it is an opportunity for outstanding candidates to develop competitive external fellowship applications with institutional support from Queen Mary University of London.

How to Apply
Informal enquiries are welcome and should be directed to the relevant Head of Department or the Fellowships Coordinator, Lee Henry (l.henry@qmul.ac.uk).
To ensure sufficient time for review and institutional approval, prospective applicants should contact us at least three months before the external fellowship submission deadline.

Applications should include:
1. A research CV (maximum 2 pages).
2. A research vision/fellowship proposal outline (maximum 2 pages).
3. A cover letter outlining:
o the fellowship scheme(s) you intend to apply for;
o why your proposal is a good fit for the scheme(s); and
o your rationale for applying to QMUL's School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences.

Please send all application materials to l.henry@qmul.ac.uk.