About us:

The Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry is world-renowned for its progressive research in the field of child and adolescent mental health.  

Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry | School of Academic Psychiatry | King’s College London (kcl.ac.uk)

In 2025, the Department will be moving to the newly built Pears Maudsley Centre for Children and Young People (PMC). The PMC has been developed by the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People – a partnership between King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Maudsley Charity. The Centre’s aim is to reduce the rate and impact of child mental health through world-leading research and its speedy translation into clinical care. This will be achieved through the co-location of clinical and academic teams to ensure that clinically relevant research is translated into novel preventions and treatments to benefit young people.

The PMC is the only facility in Europe with a primary focus on the  mental health of young people and will have a state-of-the-art clinical research facility with cutting-edge equipment and be the perfect environment for translational research for young people. 

www.kcl.ac.uk/research/pears-maudsley-centre

https://slam.nhs.uk/pearsmaudsleycentre

About the role:

This is an exciting opportunity for a post-doctoral research associate to work on a multicentre project funded by the NIHR that examines the effects of digital sleep therapy in children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The post-doc will be based in KCL, London and work closely with Prof Rubia but be part of a multi-centre team led by Prof Catherine Hill and Prof Samuele Cortese and others across London and Southampton (The DISCA project).

Home | Disca Study (discasleep.org.uk)

Katya Rubia - King's College London (kcl.ac.uk) 

The aim of the project is to test whether a newly developed digital parent-guided behavioural intervention for chronic insomnia in children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (70% of people with ADHD have sleep problems) is significantly more cost-effective than treatment-as-usual (TAU) to improve sleep and other relevant outcomes (e.g., child behaviour and parental well-being, neuropsychological functioning and other measures).

The post-holder will be responsible for the neuropsychological assessments before and after the treatment. They will have some programming skills and convert existing online psychological assessments into more child-friendly formats within the first 6 months and then subsequently assist the parents/children remotely with administration of the neuropsychological tasks which they will perform in an online assessment platform at their homes.

The post-doc will have the opportunity to extend his/her experience in neurocognitive testing as well as analysing data and write papers. The candidate will work on the development of an exciting new digital sleep therapy for ADHD with a multidisciplinary team of sleep experts, cognitive neuroscientists, child psychiatrists and statisticians. 

This role will be offered on a full-time, fixed term contract until 31st Aug 2027.

About you:

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1.       PhD in Neuropsychology, Experimental Psychology, Psychiatry, Neuroscience or related fields.

2.       Experience in neurocognitive testing and data analysis

3.       Experience with data collection, storage and statistical analysis

4.       Excellent paper writing skills

5.       Excellent oral and written communication skills, interpersonal skills, ability to work in a team and maintain good channels of communication with participants

6.      Prior experience of working in a related field

Desirable criteria

1.      Basic programming skills

2.      Experience of working with children with mental health disorders

3.       Experience of working with ADHD or pediatric groups

4.       Experience of working in a RCT

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the next page after you click “Apply Now”. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6.

Further information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's. We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

Interviews are due to be held on 26th June.

We are able to offer sponsorship for candidates who do not currently possess the right to work in the UK.

This post is subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service Clearance.