Research Assistant (Food Microbiology)

National Centre for Food Manufacturing

We are seeking a Research Assistant with expertise in laboratory based microbiology and molecular biology to join our dynamic team at the University of Lincoln’s National Centre for Food Manufacturing (NCFM). Our successful candidate will work across a range of projects largely funded by industry partners, UK Government and other funding bodies. Whilst primarily focused on food microbiology and molecular biology, the opportunity to work across other food science and technology disciplines exists, and so the role can provide a range of experiences.

A satellite campus of the University of Lincoln, The National Centre for Food Manufacturing (NCFM) is a major resource for the UK’s food industry with over 250 major companies accessing courses, technical services and research. Our clients include the major national and global food manufacturing businesses and leading supermarkets, and we collaborate with many international partners and universities. The NCFM has outstanding sector-focused facilities, including a state-of-the-art food factory demonstrating cutting edge food automation.

Our successful candidate will contribute significantly to our microbiology/molecular science projects that focus on isolation, enumeration, identification and characterisation of microorganism from a range of food and environmental samples, including food samples collected along the supply chain or from food processing environments, meat products, novel and traditional foods, and vegan based and non-vegan based foods. You will work on projects involving the handling of category 2 microorganisms such as Campylobacter, E.coli, Listeria, Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus, and therefore knowledge and experience of working with microbial samples under aseptic conditions, whilst applying Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) is essential. You will also need to have experience in the phenotypic characterisation of Gram-negative bacteria with AMR.

Our successful candidate will also contribute to industry related projects involving artificial inoculation of microbial pathogen surrogate for thermal and non-thermal process validation, and to a range of shelf-life estimation and microbiological challenge studies.

Please note that you must be available to start in post by no later than the end of August 2023.

The University of Lincoln offers exciting career opportunities with the chance to grow and develop to reach your full potential. We also offer a wide range of staff benefits, including a generous annual leave allowance, progressive pay rates, access to discounts at popular stores and more.