Clinical Research Fellow

Job Title: Clinical Research Fellow Department: Department of Psychiatry Reporting to: Associate Professor John Lyne and Professor David Cotter, Department of Psychiatry Location: RCSI Education & Research Centre, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin 9.

Contract/Duration: Full time.

Minimum 12 months.

Up to 20 months.

Remuneration: Up to a maximum of €56,855 (Postdoc Level 2, point 3, also appointable as Clinical Research Fellow) subject to experience Closing Date: Thursday April 3rd 2025 Summary of Post This post, funded by a European Horizon grant, is part of a European multicentre research programme ( The overarching aims of Youth-GEMs are 1) to advance the molecular and neurobiological understanding of the interplay between genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors in driving or preventing the transition from mental health to mental illness in young people, and 2) to provide youth and health professionals evidence-based tools and instruments for robust assessment of mental ill-health and for prediction of mental health trajectories.

A major scientific contribution of Youth-GEMs is the delivery of a deeper mechanistic understanding through its molecular and neurobiological investigations of mental ill-health trajectories from a developmental perspective.

By integrating data from molecular, genetic, epigenetic, epidemiological, and clinical studies, Youth-GEMs will be able to establish direct links between dynamic, environmentally-shaped biological processes taking place during key periods of neurodevelopment and expression of mental ill-health.

Youth-GEMs will advance the field by delivering neurobiology-informed (epi)genomic instruments specific to developmental stage, cell-type, and stress-response and identify molecular targets.

This will result in a deep understanding of functional genomics of the developing human brain.

Consequently, this will lay the groundwork to establish an adaptive and continuously evolving process with an aspirational goal of achieving more precise and etiopathology-driven taxonomy of mental illnesses that would feed useful information into more personalized psychiatry.

Another unique aspect of the project is the investigation of genetic and environment factors (and their interactions) in long-term individual/personalized trajectories of mental health using translational epidemiology and advanced statistics.

The use of deeply phenotyped general population-based cohorts from age 10 to 24 and the generation of the first longitudinal study of trans-syndromal help-seeking young people between ages 12 and 24 will provide robust findings needed to advance the field.

It will also provide evidence-based prediction tools and will aid in eliminating the artificial barrier between child/adolescent and adult psychiatry services.

Overall the Youth-GEM project adopts a thorough "trans-syndromal" approach, addressing the continuum of mental phenotypes (expressed across the population, and dynamic in time) and the underlying neurobiology, and therefore provides a much better alternative to the "transdiagnostic" approach.

The researcher in this post will be involved in the Irish arm of the study and will investigate blood biomarker associations with mental health outcomes.

A variety of laboratory techniques such as ELISA and other proteomic quantification methods will be used to quantify the biological markers present in the blood samples of the participants from the Youth-GEM study.

In addition various statistical and machine learning based approaches such as univariate, multi-variate, logistic regression models, repeated measures ANOVA and machine learning based prediction paradigm might be applied to understand and analyse the biological and clinical data.

The researcher will liaise with other European research centres and get involved in collaborative research networks for ongoing research.

The ideal candidate should have a track record of publishing research in the area of mental health and biomarkers in mental health and have an deep understanding of the research involving biomarkers in mental health and the relationship to outcome.

This project is led by Professor Mary Cannon and David Cotter Specifically, the duties of the post are: Manage activities associated with the research group including the preparation and submission of research ethics applications, managing project and individual authorisations, delivery of appropriate training, and contributing to experimental design and post study analysis.

Attend programmes of training and development related to the trial as may be required from time to time, including Good Clinical Practice training.

Planning and performing laboratory procedures including aliquoting the samples and randomizing for proteomic assays, performing immune-assays, processing the proteomic data for statistical analyses Review of study designs and statistical analysis plans as required.

Review of draft progress reports.

Participate in statistics training as needed and undertake statistical analysis.

Collaborate with European research partners.

Support the preparation of scientific reports and grant review reports as required.

Writing of peer-review publications and presentations.

Academic supervision of students and research staff, as required.

Other such duties as may be assigned from time to time.

Complying with statutory legislation and Departmental rules and requirements in development of your own and general staff welfare and safety.

Representing the best interests of the Department/College at all times.

Qualifications - (Essential): MB Degree (or equivalent) or Neuroscience Degree, preferably MSc with expertise in mental health.

Knowledge & Experience - (Essential): Research publications in a relevant field, ideally psychosis.

Knowledge & Experience - (Desirable): Very strong research skills and a proven track record in publication of research in this area.

An understanding of the field of psychosis.

An understanding of the use of biomarkers in mental health.

Experience with statistical analysis software (e.g: Stata, SPSS) and programming software (e.g.: Python, R).

Experience with laboratory techniques required for this post as detailed above.

Psychiatry membership (CPI and/or MRCPsych) or examinations Excellent interpersonal, communication and presentation skills Attention to detail and thoroughness in work practices and an ability to work to deadlines A capacity to work collaboratively as part of a team as well as independently, in a non-structured environment An ability to win the confidence of stakeholders, researchers and research partner representatives An ability to foster and sustain academic relationships internally and externally A desire to be a leader in innovation of mental health services safely using AI into the future Further details in the attached job description, available below

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