JOB VACANCY

Programme ManagerGROW Colombia

RCUK-GCRF-Grow-Colombia

Background to the RCUK-GCRF Growing Research Capability award: Preserving, restoring and managing Colombian Biodiversity through Responsible Innovation (GROW-Colombia)

The Earlham Institute was recently awarded an RCUK-GCRF capacity building grant focused on preserving and managing biodiversity in Colombia. Colombia’s biodiversity is not only important for the country’s natural heritage and the preservation of unique species in the world, it is also essential for the improvement of human welfare, social equality and economic development.

The programme, led by Professor Federica Di Palma, is a multidisciplinary programme aimed at strengthening Colombian research capability in the biological sciences, computational biology, and socio-economics, and raising general awareness of the importance of biodiversity. The programme brings together an alliance of complementary skills from a wide range of partners to understand the mutual impacts of biodiverse ecosystems and sustainable agricultural productivity.

Our goals are to build research capacity, partnerships and knowledge, with the longer-term goals of stimulating economic and social growth around biodiversity.

Overview.

Salary:£39,150 - £47,850Post No: 1003398Contract length: 46 monthsDepartment: Organisms & EcosystemsOpening date: 22 January 2018Closing date: 16 February 2018

Job details

The funded programme sits alongside the BRIDGE Colombia network (www.bridgecolombia.org) which is a multidisciplinary network of research organisations in the UK and Colombia founded in March 2017, to develop robust coordinated activities under a shared vision centered on biodiversity as a means to achieve sustainability and peace. The network actively facilitates collaborative and fully integrated research programmes; promotes research excellence and the use of innovation in technologies and approaches to develop resilience in research capabilities; stimulates partnerships; and promotes exchange of knowledge.

Several new academic appointments and operational appointments (postdoctoral and fellowship level) are being made at EI under the GROW Colombia programme.

Here we are seeking a highly skilled Programme Manager to provide project management for the £6.5M Grow Colombia project funded by Research Councils UK through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) (http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/funding/gcrf/growingcapability/).

Apply online: bit.ly/prog-manager

Principle responsibilities:

1. Project Management of all UK-based and Colombian-based programme activities including:

a) Working closely and effectively with the PI and governance structures, and with colleagues in the Operations and Research Support Office to ensure the highest quality of project management, evaluation and monitoring in all aspects of the project; b) Working closely with GROW Colombia project management team, consisting of a fulltime programme Administrator and part-time operational officer; c) leading the monitoring, evaluation and reporting of project finances in line with RCUK aligned methodologies in consultation with the PI, Director of Operations, Research Faculty Office, NBI Contracts Office and NBI Finance office; d) Providing regular progress reports on all scientific, operational (training, Knowledge Exchange) and financial aspects of the programme, as required by the PI and governance structures, and by the funders; e) Working with the PI and the RCUK GCRF Cohort for advice and any additional requirements for the project to ensure the development and sharing of best practice in managing this type of complex grant; f) Leading effective marketing and promotion of GROW Colombia to key stakeholders in the UK, and Colombia. g) Working with the wider BRIDGE Colombia network and others to explore the sustainability of the research collaborations following this initial funding by RCUK GCRF.

2. Work closely with UK and Colombia research partners including companies, policymakers and NGOs to contribute effective training in knowledge exchange and enhance research capacity for Biodiversity, including: a) Assisting in the development of research programmes of collaborative research and knowledge exchange as indicated by project objectives; b) interact closely with immediate academic team and all key research partners in a professional manner at all times, to support Programme delivery and will travel to Colombia and within UK as required by project.

3. Any other duties as deemed appropriate to the grade of the post and assigned by the PI.

The role.

• Excellent academic background with PhD in the relevant area (essential)• Excellent experience of managing complex research programmes/projects and a financial budget for

research (essential)• Excellent interpersonal skills, including cultural sensitivity to enable effective cross-cultural working

(essential)• Ability to work as member of a team and across teams (essential)• Resilient, adaptable, organised and motivated (essential)• Ability to converse (oral and written) confidently in Spanish required (essential)• Understanding of international development (essential)• Experience of living or working in Colombia or other South American countries (desirable) including

experience of, or familiarity with, relevant national and international organisations present in Colombia. • Experience of presenting research at international or national conferences, congresses etc. (essential)• Willing to travel both in the UK and overseas as required by the project (essential)• Excellent communication skills to academic partners and stakeholders (essential)• Report writing abilty (essential)• Working knowledge of project management productivity tools and principles and able to develop and

implement effective processes (essential)• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and maintain effective performance when under pressure

(Essential))• Matrix management and operational delivery of the project (essential)• Good critical thinking to facilitate problem resolution (Essential)

Skills & experience.

The Earlham Institute is located on the Norwich Research Park, together with its partners: the John Innes Centre, the Quadram Institute, The Sainsbury Laboratory, the University of East Anglia, and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

The research park has an excellent reputation for research in plant and microbial sciences, interdisciplinary environmental science and food, diet and health, to which EI contributes strengths in genomics and bioinformatics.

About the Earlham Institute.

The Earlham Institute brings together multidisciplinary expertise in biosciences, bioinformatics, high performance computing and statistics to understand complex biological systems in relation to plants, animals, and their interaction with the environment. Our research is uniquely enabled by core capabilities in advanced genomics, single cell analysis, and computational platforms.

Digital Biology

Here we focus on developing computational tools and infrastructure to push the boundaries of data-driven informatics in the life sciences and enable key stages of the data lifecycle: management, integration, and interpretation. We contribute to the newest developments in the data sciences and facilitate the extrapolation of meaningful signals from often noisy data, and carry out fundamental research into software engineering methods to manage, share, visualise, and integrate the large and complex datasets.

Projects include the development of novel platforms for management of research data and software, implementation of computationally intensive algorithms for data quality assessment and assembly, design of large-scale data visualisation to improve user experience, and best practice and training in bioinformatics.

Scientific Programmes.

Organisms and Ecosystems

We use multidisciplinary approaches to understand genomes, and how they regulate and control the biological complexities of plant and animal health. A major focus is on discovering and understanding genetic diversity and its impact on traits of agricultural interest.

We develop genomic tools and resources to enable plant breeders, research communities and genebanks in support of crop improvement. We apply state-of-the-art genomics and informatics to investigate fundamental principles of plant innate immunity and the interactions between plants and their microbial pathogens. We explore key molecular mechanisms underlying vertebrate species diversity.

We also develop and implement effective computational methodologies for the assembly and annotation of large and difficult plant (e.g. wheat) and vertebrate genomes, and to characterise the complexity of eukaryotic transcriptomes and microbial communities

Engineering Biology

EI recently received funding to establish a DNA foundry facility in support of academic activities in plant and microbial genomics research at the John Innes Centre, The Sainsbury Laboratory and other organisations on the Norwich Research Park. In this emerging programme our research includes the development of software engineering approaches to optimise construct design for long DNA molecule fabrication and underpin programmes in synthetic biology.

Synthetic biology takes on the challenge of how to make the most of biological systems using paradigms borrowed from engineering disciplines. We are using genome engineering technologies to make plants into efficient factories for the biosynthesis of vaccines and therapeutics and also to improve crops for increased production and nutritive value.We are also aiming to engineer plants species used for the biosynthesis of proteins and small molecules such as vaccines and therapeutics to improve the yield and purity and to work with collaborators to study specific genes in crop plants.

earlham.ac.uk

earlham.ac.uk