King's College London

About Us

KCTU is fully registered with the UKCRC, as a multidisciplinary Collaborative Group. The KCTU business model provides researchers with a ‘mix and match’ choice of KCTU services and academic collaboration, to support successful trial delivery by teams with a wide range of expertise. While KCTU takes on trials in all disease areas, it currently has specialist strength in mental health, neuroscience, rheumatology, transplantation and ophthalmology. The total value of the portfolio is in excess of £180m predominantly NIHR funded grants. The interim Academic Director is Professor Richard Emsley.

About the Role

The appointee will provide world-class academic leadership in the future development of the King’s Clinical Trials Unit, the UKCRC registered CTU within King’s College London and Partner Trusts in King’s Health Partners, promoting and developing its work both within King’s and externally. 

You will lead an internationally competitive and externally grant funded research programme, building on the current substantial portfolio of trials, publishing high impact research papers, presenting this work at international meetings/symposia and participating in review and advisory groups and panels. 

If successful you will collaborate with scientific research groups across King’s and beyond, and the promotion of multidisciplinary clinical and methodological research.   The appointee will contribute to realising the potential of King’s Health Partners’ substantial patient population and outstanding clinical-academic strengths.

As Academic Director you will contribute to teaching in the areas of clinical trials and trial methodology and supervising post-doctoral researchers.

This is a full-time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered an indefinite contract.

About You

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

Essential criteria

1. Postgraduate qualification in medical statistics, clinical trials or other equivalent.
2. Knowledge of the requirements of Good Clinical Practice and all other legal and regulatory requirements in the management and analysis of clinical studies.
3. Extensive knowledge of NIHR clinical trial funding streams. 
4. Excellent knowledge of statistical analysis packages and the ability to oversee the use of these systems across all KCTU analysts, to ensure continuous quality improvement. 
5. Outstanding track record in published, high impact trials related research. 
6. Significant experience of research leadership with established record of outstanding research publications, successful securing of research grant funding and project management. 
7. Experience of teaching and supervision of PGR students. 
8. Ability to think strategically, take effective decisions, multi-task and manage staff.

Desirable criteria

1. Knowledge of early phase trials.
2. Knowledge of complex intervention studies (e.g. surgery, psychotherapy, lifestyle interventions). 
3. A demonstrated ability to conduct research at an internationally competitive level with evidence of international scholarship, of leading research across national boundaries and an internationally established research reputation. 
4. Experience of audits and inspections, including regulatory inspections. 
5. Experience of funding panel membership and reviewing grant applications. 

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.

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.

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