Research Assistant / Research Associate (Fixed Term)

We are seeking a Research Assistant/Research Associate to work at the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK. The post-holder will work within a Wellcome-funded cohort study focusing on microstructural brain development and cognitive development in typically developing children and adolescents, and in children and adolescents with a genetic syndrome associated with neurodevelopmental conditions (22q11.2 deletion syndrome).
Applicants will need a PhD in Psychology, Cognitive/Behavioural Science, Neuroscience or other relevant discipline, which should be completed or near completion on 1st March 2025. Note, if near completion appointment will be made as a Research Assistant, until evidence of submission.
The project team consists of Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (Cambridge, UK), Prof Rogier Kievit (Donders, the Netherlands), Prof Marianne van den Bree (Cardiff, UK) and Prof Derek Jones (Cardiff, UK). The post-holder will be based in Professor Blakemore's research group at the University of Cambridge and will also work closely with researchers in Cardiff University.
The post-holder will be expected to carry out research on social-cognitive processing and cognitive control in typically developing children and adolescents (aged 8-18 years) and children with 22q11.1 deletion syndrome.
The post-holder will be responsible for helping to design and run experimental behavioural studies using a variety of cognitive paradigms.
The post-holder's responsibilities will include writing protocols for pre-registration and ethics applications, programming tasks and questionnaires, setting up and working with a children and young people's advisory group based in Cambridge, participant recruitment (from schools and the local community in and around Cambridge), data collection (in local schools and/or in the lab), data analysis and writing up the results under the supervision of the team.
The cognitive tasks will first be piloted with children and adolescents in Cambridge and will then form part of a task battery in the structural neuroimaging study, which will take place in Cardiff.
The post-holder will be based at the University of Cambridge but will also be expected to make several short visits to Cardiff University to set up the cognitive aspects of the neuroimaging study together with the Cardiff team and help coordinate recruitment of participants from the Cardiff area. There will also be opportunities to travel to the Donders Institute, the Netherlands, to engage with the research team there.
Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 2 years in the first instance.
Please ensure that in the upload section of the online application you provide:
A cover letter on how you meet the essential criteria for this post, The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK.