Job Description
Job Title: Research Associate
Posting Start Date: 11/03/2025
Job Id: 873
School/Department: Mathematical & Physical Sciences
Work Arrangement: Full Time (On site)
Contract Type: Fixed-term
Salary per annum (£): £37,999 - £40,247
Closing Date: 08/04/2025
The University of Sheffield is a remarkable place to work. Our people are at the heart of everything we do. Their diverse backgrounds, abilities and beliefs make Sheffield a world-class university.
We offer a fantastic range of benefits including a highly competitive annual leave entitlement (with the ability to purchase more), a generous pensions scheme, flexible working opportunities, a commitment to your development and wellbeing, a wide range of retail discounts, and much more. Find out more about our benefits (opens in a new window) and join us to become part of something special.
Applications are invited for a Research Associate (RA), funded by UKRI from March 2025 for 6 months, with the possibility of extension dependent on the available funding. The post is part of a the highly collaborative Digital Research Infrastructure Integrative Molecular Biology (DRI-IMB) project to future scope how biomolecular simulations can be combined with other biophysical tools such as cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), X-ray crystallography and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Areas such as atomic force and light microscopy, mass spectrometry bioinformatics and ohmics are all within remit.
The DRI-IMB program is a community based project combining the expertise of the collaborative computational projects (CCPs) in X-ray (CCP4), NMR (CCPN), cryo-EM (CCP-EM) with biomolecular simulations (CCPBioSim). You will be part of team of around 17 computational experts split between Sheffield, Leicester and the national laboratories at Daresbury and Harwell responsible for supporting our respective CCP communities.

• Provide the interdisciplinary skills and intellectual input to understand how to combine biomolecular simulations with experimental biophysical tools in new ways.
• To develop prototype software tools for integrating biomolecular simulations with biophysical experiments in new ways.
• Interact with and help other members of the UK CCP communities, e.g. supporting CCPBioSim training events and expert community workshops for future-scoping.
• Discuss the required software development with the DRI-IMB team and agree on a strategy to complete the planned work during the project or in the future.
• Keep appropriate records of all work carried out and ideas generated.
• Analyse and record data and the software developed to inform the design of future computational tools, adhering to the FAIR data principles wherever possible.
• Write supporting documents (such as protocols, reports, etc.) to support the research group and carry our administrative roles as required.
• Provide support to other members of the research team in the DRI-IMB collaboration and in your local research group in related fields of research.
• Read academic papers, journals and textbooks and attend conferences to keep abreast of developments.
• As a member of staff you will be encouraged to make ethical decisions in your role, embedding the University sustainability strategy into your working activities wherever possible.
• Assist with the writing of the future-scoping document to inform UKRI of the software and e-Infrastructure support needed for biomolecular simulations in the future.
• Carry out other duties, commensurate with the grade and remit of the post.