Research Assistant - Predicting OCD Onset (with PhD studentship pathway)

Job id:162385. Salary:£39,755 per annum, including London Weighting Allowance.

Posted:02 November 2026. Closing date:16 November 2026.

Business unit:IoPPN. Department:Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Contact details: Gustavo Sudre. Gustavo.sudre@kcl.ac.uk

Location: Denmark Hill Campus. Category:Professional & Support Services.

Back to job search

About us:

King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience is a global leader in mental health research. The Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry leads international collaborations on early detection and prevention of neuropsychiatric disorders. This position sits within the King's Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People, bridging academic research and NHS implementation.

NB: The associated PhD studentship funding covers UK Home tuition fees only. Applicants who are liable for Overseas tuition fees will be responsible for meeting the difference between the Home and Overseas fee rates. Candidates invited to interview may be asked to demonstrate a realistic means of covering this additional cost before enrolment onto the PhD programme.

About the role:

King's College London is seeking a Research Assistant to join a Wellcome Trust-funded programme predicting obsessive-compulsive disorder onset across cohorts in the UK, Brazil and Sweden. Based in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the IoPPN, you will harmonize rich clinical and behavioural data from nine longitudinal cohorts totalling around 90,000 participants and support the development of machine learning survival models that predict the onset of OCD in children and young people. The post offers a distinctive career pathway: as well as a five-year Grade 5 salaried position, the successful candidate will receive funded PhD tuition and undertake doctoral research embedded in the project. You will work closely with Professors Shaw and Sudre within the King's Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People, gaining expertise in predictive modelling, multi-cohort data harmonization and developmental psychopathology. The successful candidate will bring strong analytical skills, a keen interest in youth mental health research, and be motivated to develop an academic career.

This is a full-time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract until 30th April 2031.

Research staff at King’s are entitled to at least 10 days per year (pro-rata) for professional development. This entitlement, from the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, applies to Postdocs, Research Assistants, Research and Teaching Technicians, Teaching Fellows and AEP equivalent up to and including grade 7. Visit the Centre for Research Staff Development for more information.

About you:

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. MSc (Distinction or Merit) in neuroscience, psychology or a closely related discipline.
2. Direct experience of clinical research data collection with young people, including administration of structured interviews, questionnaires or behavioural tasks, to enable critical evaluation of data provenance and quality during cross-cohort harmonization.
3. Experience integrating and cleaning multimodal datasets combining behavioural tasks, self-report measures and clinical assessments.
4. Demonstrated ability to design and implement a machine learning analysis pipeline on psychiatric or clinical data, working largely independently.
5. Programming experience in Python and/or R for data processing and statistical modelling, with willingness to extend skills to survival analysis and harmonization methods.
6. Demonstrated ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary research team, including the capacity to incorporate feedback from colleagues with diverse technical and clinical expertise.
7. Excellent organizational skills and meticulous attention to data quality and documentation.
8. Strong scientific communication skills, evidenced by presentations or manuscript contributions.

Desirable criteria

1. Publication or submitted manuscript from masters or subsequent research.
2. Experience with neuroimaging or genomic data.
3. Interest or experience in OCD, anxiety or related disorders in young people.
4. Valid Good Clinical Practice certificate or willingness to obtain within three months of appointment.
5. Awareness of data governance and GDPR requirements for handling sensitive health data.

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further Information

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, and we recognise its growing role in professional work. Applicants may use AI tools to support preparation of their application, for example to research the role or structure written responses. However, applications must reflect the applicant’s own work and experience. AI tools should not be used during interviews unless this has been agreed in advance as a reasonable adjustment. Further guidance on the use of AI in recruitment can be found here.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

Interviews are due to be held on TBC.