Research Associate in modelling of RNA Vaccine Production (2 posts)

Contract: Fixed-term until 5th December 2024.

Are you interested in developing platform solutions to overcome pandemics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and other diseases? More specifically, are you interested in developing digital tools for driving the development and operation of RNA vaccine & therapeutics production processes for enabling rapid, high volume, low-cost and high-quality vaccine and therapeutics production against a wide range of diseases?

We are working on an impactful, fast-paced and exciting project aiming to innovate RNA production processes for therapy and pandemic preparedness funded via the Wellcome Leap R3 Program . Within the R3 program, the team from Sheffield is playing a central role for developing a digitised, small-scale and high-throughput process for distributed and automated RNA production for therapy and pandemic preparedness.

You will develop advanced digital tools for enhancing the development and operation of RNA vaccine and therapeutics production processes. You will develop soft-sensors to enable the monitoring of difficult to measure critical quality attributes (CQAs) and digital twins to enable the real-time control of the unit-operations and systems involved in the manufacture. These will then be implemented into a Quality by Digital Design framework to support the design and operation of pilot scale process systems. To support optimal design, you will perform Techno-Economic modelling along with Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis of these approaches to ensure their robustness.

You will work closely together with other researchers and engineers at Sheffield and beyond who are working on the following set of highly complimentary challenges: 1) experimental piloting and intensification of the production process, 2) analytical techniques needed to quantify the quality of the produced RNA, 3) user-friendly dashboards for big data analytics and visualisation. These tools and techniques will support your work and all these work streams will deliver an integrated and robust approach for achieving the project goals. This will ultimately facilitate technology transfer and distributed manufacturing to rapidly mass-produce RNA vaccines and therapeutics for global demands in a disease-agnostic manner.

You will have a PhD or equivalent research experience in engineering, computer science or related mathematical discipline. Experience of bioprocess modelling and/or digital twins is essential, while awareness of RNA vaccine production, RNA vaccine formulation unit operations, biopharmaceutical production, production process development, continuous production, manufacturing scale-up and good manufacturing practices (GMP) is desirable.

You will have opportunities to undertake training on project-related technical skills and professional skills. Given the multidisciplinary nature of the project, and planned research visits, you will get opportunities to learn new skills by closely collaborating with internationally leading partners from academia and industry.