Fellowship Opportunities for Early Career Researchers

The Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge invites expressions of interest from early career researchers who wish to be sponsored for external fellowships to establish an independent research group.

Successful candidates will be of the highest calibre, demonstrating an exceptional track record for their career stage, and have the potential to submit strongly competitive fellowship applications. The Department of Genetics provides a world class, highly interactive and supportive research environment within the School of Biological Sciences at Cambridge. Research Themes span across the School, providing a host of opportunities to network across disciplines and Departments, and peer-to-peer mentoring is supported through the early PI network. We value and support early career researchers who choose to secure a Group Leader Fellowship as their route to becoming Principal Investigators. This policy applies to fellowships such as Wellcome Trust Career Development Award (CDA), MRC CDA, BBSRC David Phillips, NERC IRF, Royal Society URF and Dorothy Hodgkin, CRUK and equivalent fellowships.

Successful applicants will be supported through the Cambridge Biological Sciences Research Fellowships Framework with respect to their funding application, research group establishment and career progression. They will have group leader status equivalent to tenured staff, playing a full role in running the department and will be given opportunities to gain experience in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. 

We expect fellows to develop into strong candidates for Principal Investigator positions in the department or elsewhere. In line with this ethos, a substantial proportion of our past departmental fellows have progressed to permanent positions in the University and other institutions.

Although not large, the department is diverse, covering a wide range of topics in fundamental genetics and the application of genetic approaches across the biological and biomedical sciences.  We are interested in candidates across this range, whose research would benefit from, and enhance, our research environment.

As a department we are committed to providing a working culture that celebrates and promotes equality, diversity, and inclusion. We therefore strongly encourage expressions of interest from women, people with disabilities, and people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, as they are currently underrepresented at this level in our University. The opportunity is open to candidates from both within the UK and internationally, and support with visa applications will be provided where necessary.  

Further Details

We are looking to sponsor up to three potential fellows in the coming rounds. The Department runs a pre-application selection process and to initiate this please send a CV, a 2-page outline of your future research plans/proposed application aims, the names of three referees and a cover letter explaining why you are a good fit for the Department, to Sam Laister hradm@gen.cam.ac.uk by 18 November 2022.

In your CV please identify your three most significant papers and provide a brief statement about their contribution. More generally, we appreciate explanatory text to provide context and highlight the importance of selected outputs as in narrative CVs. As signatories of DORA we do not use journal titles or Impact Factors to assess research quality and candidates should not include uncontextualised citation counts or other metrics such as h-index in their applications. 

If you would like to discuss the opportunity further please contact our Head of Department, Professor Steve Russell sr120@cam.ac.uk or the chair of our Strategy Committee, Professor Richard Durbin rd109@cam.ac.uk .