About this role
Location: Old Road Campus
The University of Oxford is a stimulating work environment, which enjoys an international reputation as a world-class centre of excellence. Our research plays a key role in tackling many global challenges, from reducing our carbon emissions to developing vaccines during a pandemic.
The Department of Psychiatry is based on the Warneford Hospital site in Oxford – a friendly, welcoming place of work with an international reputation for excellence. The Department has a substantial research programme, with major funding from Medical Research Council (MRC), Wellcome Trust and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and provides highly rated medical training in psychiatry. The Head of Department is Professor Belinda Lennox.
We are seeking a postdoctoral researcher to join the SMARTbiomed Collaboration. The primary focus of this post will be the development of computational pipelines for the automated extraction and discovery of image-derived phenotypes (IDPs) across multiple imaging modalities—initially concentrating on whole-body and abdominal MRI—using UK Biobank imaging data.
About the Role
The post is funded for 3 years and is based in the Big Data Institute, Old Road Campus.
The post is only available as full-time. However, we can discuss flexible working hours (e.g. starting and finishing earlier in the day) to accommodate your needs. Working remotely is possible for up to 1 day/week.
You will join an interdisciplinary team of researchers spanning imaging science, machine learning, genetics, and population health, working closely with collaborators at the Nuffield Department of Population Health (NDPH), the Big Data Institute (BDI), and the Department of Psychiatry.
You will Develop, implement, and adapt existing self-supervised and multimodal learning methods for the automated extraction and discovery of image-derived phenotypes (IDPs) across large-scale population imaging datasets such as UK Biobank. You will design and optimise scalable computational pipelines and algorithms to construct and evaluate foundation models for whole-body and abdominal MRI. Alongside this, you will conduct comprehensive and systematic literature and database searches related to self-supervised learning, medical imaging, and population-level phenotyping.
About You
You will have or be close to the completion of a relevant PhD/DPhil (e.g. in Computer Science, Engineering, or Medical Image Analysis) and possess sufficient specialist knowledge in medical imaging—particularly whole-body and abdominal MRI—and machine learning to work within established research programmes. A demonstrable strong experience in research software development using Python programming language and modern machine learning frameworks is essential. Experience of working with UK Biobank imaging or similar large-scale population would be desirable.
Diversity
Committed to equality and valuing diversity
Our active Psychiatry People and Culture teams and initiatives including our values and behaviours framework, work to make the Department of Psychiatry as supportive, welcoming and inclusive as possible.
Application Process
You will be required to upload a covering letter/supporting statement, CV and the details of two referees as part of your online application. Please see the University pages on the application process at https://www.jobs.ox.ac.uk/application-process
The closing date for applications is 12:00 midday on 12 December 2025
Interviews will take place on 19 December and will be online