Research Associate in Cardiff

Research Associate
Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences
School of Medicine
College of Biomedical and Life Sciences

We are looking for a postdoctoral Research Associate to join the SYLFAEN-PSY project in the Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG), Cardiff University School of Medicine.

Measuring the symptoms of psychosis takes time that research studies and clinics rarely have, so most people with psychotic disorders are only ever partly assessed. SYLFAEN-PSY asks whether Large Language Models (LLMs) can infer those symptoms from data that studies already hold, accurately enough to stand alongside the rating instruments we use today. You can read more in our announcement of the project.

In this role, you will:
• Develop and validate LLM-based methods that extract and infer psychotic symptoms from multimodal research data, from clinical text to cognitive measures, neuroimaging-derived phenotypes and genomic information.
• Benchmark what those models infer against gold-standard symptom-rating instruments, using deeply characterised cohorts with thousands of individuals and multiple instruments.
• Work with our industry and healthcare partners to validate the system on external datasets, including NHS Wales records and a research network covering more than six million people.
• Publish in international journals, present at conferences, and develop your own applications for research funding.
• Supervise postgraduate research students and work with colleagues across the Schools of Medicine and Computational and Mathematical Sciences.

We'd like to hear from you if you:
• Hold a PhD in a relevant subject (or close to submission) or have equivalent experience from industry.
• Have a track record in psychiatric or psychometric research.

Experience with using LLMs for data analysis, or natural language processing research, will be welcome but it's not needed for application. This project pairs our mental health research team with AI specialists in the School of Computational and Mathematical Sciences, and we expect both sides to learn from each other.

The CNGG brings together clinical, genomic, statistical and bioinformatic expertise to work on psychiatric, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. We take career development seriously, and the Centre has a strong record of helping people build expertise in the areas that interest them, secure funding, and advance to the next stage of their professional careers.

This post is based at the Hadyn Ellis Building, Cathays campus.
This role is eligible to be offered on a blended working basis, meaning that as well as spending time working on campus you can also choose to spend some time working from another location, e.g. your home. The University is committed to offering this flexibility, wherever the role and business need allows, supporting work-life balance.

Cardiff University offers many excellent benefits, including 45 days annual leave (incl bank holidays), local pension scheme, a cycle to work scheme and other travel initiatives, annual increments within the pay scale, and more. It is an exciting and vibrant place to work, with many different challenges and is a proud Living Wage supporter.

How we will support you in performing in this role -

There are some things that you must have before you can start this role (see 'Essential Criteria'), but other things can be developed either through training, or just by general on-the-job experience. We want to support and develop you once you have started in the role using a combination of the following to get the best out of you:

1. Regular one-to-ones with your manager
2. An experienced and supportive team around you
3. Supporting you through job-relevant training and development that you may require
4. A mentoring scheme

For informal enquiries please contact Antonio Pardiñas ([email protected]). If you are unsure whether your experience fits, please get in touch anyway.

This post is full-time (35 hours per week), available from 1st December 2026 and fixed term until 30th November 2028.

Salary: £41,885 - £46,970 per annum (Grade 6). Appointments to roles at Cardiff University are usually made at bottom of scale unless in exceptional circumstances.

Date advert posted: Tuesday, 27 October 2026

Closing date: Tuesday, 10 November 2026