Project Scientist

Salary range £29,619 (capped due to funding)

FTE : 1.0

Term : Fixed term (31/03/2025)

Closing date : 20/03/2023

CMAC is a world leading medicines manufacturing research centre that hosts a portfolio of collaborative research programmes aimed to transform the development and manufacture of medicines (www.cmac.ac.uk). Building on our long standing partnerships with a wide range of pharmaceutical manufacturers, technology providers and leading universities, we are establishing a new EPSRC-funded Centre focussed on enabling digital transformation. The Made Smarter Innovation – Digital Medicines Manufacturing Research Centre (DM2) is a 3.5-year programme that will accelerate the adoption of industrial digital technologies (IDTs) in the pharma sector across five core Platforms covering data, advanced manufacturing, digital QC, patient centric supply and networking and skills. The DM2 Centre connects a leading multidisciplinary team of researchers across Strathclyde, Loughborough and Cambridge universities with leading digital technology providers, medicines manufacturers and healthcare providers, to drive a digital transformation in medicines manufacturing.

The five integrated Platforms designed by the academic and industrial researcher partners are: (1) The Data Platform; (2) Autonomous MicroScale Manufacturing Platform; (3) Digital Quality Control Platform; (4) Adaptive Digital Supply Platform; and (5) The DM2 Network & Skills Platform. This ambitious programme is supported by a large team of Post-doctoral Research Associates, Research Technicians and management staff to plan, deliver and disseminate the ambitious research, networking and training activities.

We are currently seeking applicants for a Project Scientist based at the University of Strathclyde within Platform 2 - Autonomous MicroScale Manufacturing. This Platform will accelerate development of medicine products and manufacturing processes by creating agile, small-scale production facilities that rapidly generate large data sets and drive research. Robotic technologies will be assembled to create a unique small-scale medicine manufacturing and testing system to select drug formulations and processes and produce stable products with the desired performance. Integrating several IDTs will accelerate drug product manufacture, significantly reducing experiments and dramatically reducing development time, raw materials and associated costs.

The post-holder will also support the Work Package 3 on Flexible Real-time Release Testing (RTRT) of the Right-First Time Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals project (RiFTMaP, £2M with £1.5M from EPSRC and £0.5M from US NSF, EP/V034723/1, September 2021 – August 2025) with material characterisation and product testing. This is an international collaboration with the University of Sheffield, University College London and Purdue University.

This is a unique opportunity to help realising the next generation of pharmaceutical production facilities through the development and integration of a collaborative robot, cutting-edge sensors and manufacturing technologies. You will work closely with the DM2 team to deliver the DM2 Autonomous MicroScale Manufacturing Platform and new modelling approaches as well as the delivery of a flexible RTRT framework as part for the RiFTMaP project.

You will have a HNC or equivalent work-based experience in a physical science/engineering discipline (e.g. chemistry, materials science, chemical engineering, pharmaceutical sciences or a related discipline) with appropriate experience in the physical characterisation of powdered materials. Activities will involve the use of laboratory characterisation techniques to measure a range of physical properties such as flow function, particle size, density, porosity etc. as well as breaking force, contact angle, disintegration time and dissolution testing of solid oral dosage forms. You will also directly support the operation of the new MicroScale Manufacturing Platform.

You must have good verbal and written communications skills and you must also be able to work as a member of a team. You should be able to independently operate material characterisation instruments and manufacturing processes (e.g. tablet press, capsule filling machine), have good organisational skills, initiative, and the ability to pay close attention to detail.

Informal enquiries about the post can be directed to Dr Daniel Markl, DM2 Co-I and Platform 2 Lead (daniel.markl@strath.ac.uk).

Formal interviews for this post will be held on 31/03/2023.