AI/ML Postdoctoral Fellow - F Rouhani Lab

Location: The Francis Crick Institute, London

Short summary

We are seeking an ambitious Postdoctoral Fellow to lead a cutting-edge computational project investigating how driver mutation clones interact with their microenvironment in chronic liver disease and liver cancer.

This is a highly collaborative and cross-institutional role between the Francis Crick Institute and the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Working closely with the Lotfollahi Lab – leaders in generative AI and foundation models for spatial and single-cell genomics – you will develop and apply state-of-the-art machine learning approaches to large-scale spatial genomics and multi-modal biological datasets.

Key Responsibilities

These include but are not limited to:

• Developing advanced AI/ML methods for analysing spatial genomics and histology datasets.
• Applying graph neural networks, transformer models and generative AI approaches to study clone-microenvironment interactions.
• Integrating spatial transcriptomics, single-cell sequencing and imaging datasets.
• Designing benchmarking strategies and reproducible computational workflows.
• Performing clonal reconstruction and spatial mapping analyses from genomic datasets.
• Collaborating closely with computational scientists, clinicians and experimental researchers across the Crick and Sanger Institute.
• Leading publications, conference presentations and dissemination of research findings.

About you

You will have:

• PhD (or near submission) in computational biology, machine learning, computer science, statistics or a related quantitative discipline.
• Experience developing and applying deep learning or AI/ML methods to complex scientific datasets.
• Strong programming and scientific computing skills in Python (e.g. numpy, pandas, PyTorch and/or JAX).
• Experience analysing complex biological, imaging or spatial datasets, or strong evidence of rapidly adapting to new data domains.
• Excellent communication, organisational and collaborative working skills.
• Ability to work effectively within interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research teams.

About us

The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute dedicated to understanding the fundamental biology underlying health and disease. Its work is helping to understand why disease develops and to translate discoveries into new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, infections, and neurodegenerative diseases.

An independent organisation, its founding partners are the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, UCL, Imperial College London and King’s College London.

The Crick was formed in 2015, and in 2016 it moved into a new state-of-the-art building in central London which brings together 1500 scientists and support staff working collaboratively across disciplines, making it the biggest biomedical research facility under one building in Europe.

The Francis Crick Institute will be world-class with a strong national role. Its distinctive vision for excellence includes commitments to collaboration; developing emerging talent and exporting it to the rest of the UK; public engagement; and helping turn discoveries into treatments as quickly as possible to improve lives and strengthen the economy.