Overview
Lecturer in Experimental Respiratory Sciences (Non-Clinical) – Strand, London, WC2R 2LS
About us
Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine
The Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine (FoLSM) is one of the UK’s largest and most successful centres for biomedical research and education, ranked 9th globally in the QS World University Rankings 2026. We bring together internationally leading strengths in basic, translational and clinical science, advancing human health through world‑class research and education that benefit communities locally, nationally and globally.
Our work focuses on prevention, prediction, diagnosis and management of health conditions, with growing emphasis on experimental medicine, advanced therapies, digital health and AI. Collaboration is central to our mission, with interdisciplinary teams working across the Faculty to maximise collective expertise.
FoLSM employs more than 2,000 staff across six Schools and the cross‑cutting Centre for Education. We are committed to building an equitable, inclusive and diverse community, hold a Silver Athena Swan award and contribute to equality programmes across King’s.
Based across four campuses (Guy’s, St Thomas’, Waterloo and Denmark Hill) we work closely with our NHS Hospital Trust partners under the King’s Health Partners Umbrella. Our 8,500 students study programmes spanning Medicine, Pharmacy, Nutrition & Dietetics, Physiotherapy and biomedical sciences. Our research excellence is reflected in REF2021, where 94.1% of submissions were rated world‑leading or internationally excellent. Our research is supported by strong national and international partnerships, including with the Francis Crick Institute.
School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences
In our school, where the Department of Respiratory and Allergy Sciences is based, we work to advance human health and wellbeing through groundbreaking research and collaborations.
Our clinical and discovery scientists join forces across disciplines, exploring key questions from a molecular and cellular level to developing innovative therapies, clinical trials and spin out companies. Together, we tackle some of the most pressing challenges in biology and medicine, including asthma, allergy, cancer, COPD, diabetes, arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, liver disease, transplant rejection, vaccination, and infections caused by numerous pathogens including HIV, SARS-CoV-2, influenza virus and salmonella.
Equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, our School is a hub of innovation. Additionally, we host a flow cytometry facility, an Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases BioBank and a single cell omics platform.
Many of our colleagues hold senior leadership roles across King’s College London and within the wider scientific and healthcare communities, shaping education, research and policy, mentoring future leaders, and bridging the gap between academia and industry.
Our commitment to impact is reflected in real-world outcomes, from revolutionary new molecular insights to pioneering treatments for chronic or life-threatening diseases. Our researchers’ achievements are frequently featured in news headlines, underscoring the tangible difference our work makes.
About the role
We are seeking an ambitious experimental scientist to join the new Department of Respiratory and Allergy Sciences as a Lecturer in Experimental Respiratory Science. This is an opportunity to establish an independent research programme within a highly collaborative environment that brings together discovery scientists, respiratory pharmacologists and clinical investigators, with access to exceptional human samples and clinically characterised respiratory populations.
The successful candidate will develop innovative experimental approaches to fundamental questions in respiratory disease. Working with primary human cells and tissues, including blood and PBMC-derived cells and airway and lung-derived material, they will develop mechanistic models of disease, host response, infection and co-infection, and cellular interactions.
We are particularly interested in candidates who can move beyond describing biological differences to testing causality through experimental perturbation, and who are excited by developing new approaches when existing models cannot adequately answer the scientific question.
The post holder will integrate experimental biology with capabilities across King’s, including advanced cell and co-culture systems, micro-CT, spatial transcriptomics, bulk and single-cell sequencing and other molecular and imaging approaches. Working closely with respiratory clinician scientists, pharmacologists and discovery scientists, they will translate biological observations into testable mechanisms, identify and validate therapeutic targets, and determine whether pharmacological manipulation can modify disease-relevant phenotypes. A major part of the role will be collaborative scientific leadership, supporting scientists and clinicians to turn observations from patients, cohorts and human samples into rigorous experimental questions while developing a distinctive, internationally competitive research programme.
Education is a central component of this position. The successful candidate will contribute substantially to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and research supervision, help develop research-led respiratory education, and have opportunities to develop educational leadership, including the future development and leadership of postgraduate programmes in respiratory medicine and science.
This is a full-time post for 35 hours per week and you will be offered an indefinite contract.
Research staff at King’s are entitled to at least 10 days per year (pro-rata) for professional development. This entitlement, from the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, applies to Postdocs, Research Assistants, Research and Teaching Technicians, Teaching Fellows and AEP equivalent up to and including grade 7. Visit the Centre for Research Staff Development for more information.
About you
To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:
Essential criteria
- PhD qualified in a relevant biomedical, biological, pharmacological or related discipline.
- Evidence of developing scientific independence following the PhD, including intellectual ownership of research questions, a strong peer-reviewed publication record and the potential to establish an internationally competitive research programme.
- Strong conceptual and practical expertise in experimental human biology, including substantial experience of primary human cell and/or tissue culture and the ability to develop models appropriate to mechanistic questions.
- Experience of complex cell-based experimental systems relevant to inflammation, infection, tissue injury or repair, including co-culture and/or infection or co-infection models, with the ability to work across cellular compartments rather than a single model or technique.
- Ability to integrate experimental biology with advanced discovery and phenotyping approaches such as imaging, transcriptomics, spatial biology and/or single-cell technologies, including understanding how these approaches can be used to test biological hypotheses.
- Demonstrable commitment to collaborative, interdisciplinary science, with the ability to work effectively with scientists, clinicians and pharmacologists to translate clinical observations and human samples into mechanistic studies and therapeutic target discovery/validation.
- Demonstrable commitment to high-quality research-led education, with experience of teaching and/or student supervision and the potential and ambition to develop academic leadership in undergraduate and postgraduate respiratory education.
Desirable criteria
- Experience working with advanced respiratory models such as air-liquid interface, multicellular or 3D systems, where these have been used to answer mechanistic questions.
- Experience of target discovery or validation, compound testing, phenotypic screening, dose-response or mechanism-of-action studies in academic and/or industry settings.
- Experience of developmental and/or regenerative, epithelial repair and/or host-pathogen biology relevant to major unanswered questions in respiratory disease.
- Evidence of competitive peer-reviewed research funding (directly or indirectly, according to the rules of the funding body), fellowship support or a substantive intellectual contribution to successful grant applications and collaborative programmes.
- Experience of curriculum or module development, innovative teaching or assessment, programme leadership and/or clear ambition to develop and lead postgraduate education in respiratory medicine or respiratory sciences.
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 page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.
IMPORTANT: Before applying for this role, please make sure you have the right to work in the country where the role is based. Unless it clearly stipulates within in the job advert above that the hiring company is looking to or able to sponsor applicants it is deemed that the hiring employer will only consider applications from those able to comply with and work in the country where the role is based.
