Associate Professor in Oral Biology - Birmingham, United Kingdom - University of Birmingham

University of Birmingham

Verified Company

Birmingham, United Kingdom

3 weeks ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

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Description

Position Details
School of Dentistry, College of Medical and Dental Sciences

Location:
University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £54,421 to £63,059 with potential progression once in post to £82,225

Grade 9

Full Time, Permanent

Closing date: 15th August 2023

UK and Global travel will be required as part of this role

Background

Oral infectious and inflammatory diseases are the most common human diseases worldwide and cause significant morbidity, impacting upon general health, wellbeing, and mortality rates.

Their impact on the economy is substantial and more years of life are lost to disability from oral diseases than any other human condition.

Our research is making significant inroads into understanding their pathobiology and translating this into novel treatment approaches.

The growing strength and impact of the Dental School's collaborative interdisciplinary research was recently highlighted in our excellent REF2021 scores.

As the substantial part of Unit of Assessment 3, Dentistry, alongside Pharmacy and Nursing ranked in the 1st quartile for % 4* outputs; an increase of 25 places to 11th out of 90 higher education institutions compared with REF2014.

Overall, 94% of our REF2021 return was deemed internationally excellent or world leading.

Our state-of-the-art Dental School and Hospital opened in 2016 as the first integrated, stand-alone facility of its kind in the UK for almost 40 years.

The building offers 650m2 of on-site high technology laboratory space, including cell culture suites, confocal, micro-CT and scanning electron microscopy facilities, microbiology, immunology, photobiology, histology, flow cytometry, analytical chemistry, biomaterials science and molecular biology laboratories as well as a large liquid nitrogen facility for our two HTA approved tissue banks.

We have two associated clinical trials suites to enable us to translate our discovery science into novel healthcare solutions.

Our clinician-basic science partnerships provide broad expertise and enable us to exploit our findings through clinical research and trials of novel diagnostics and therapeutics in collaboration with our NHS partners.

Our research is strategically organised into two overarching theme areas of 'Clinical and Experimental Sciences' and 'Regeneration and Rehabilitation Sciences', within which are seven research groups (Figure).

The groups comprise expert and cognate interdisciplinary teams that operate broadly within and across theme areas.

The strengths of our world-renowned teams centre upon a detailed and sound understanding of disease mechanisms, which help us develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for periodontal, pulpal and periradicular diseases, caries, skin and mucosal diseases, including oral cancer and are enhanced by strong local, national and international (Europe, North/South America, Far-East, Asia) collaborations.

Our focus on the scientific basis of oral and dental disease and its translation to clinical care is providing innovative solutions to important problems, significantly impacting the population and helping us to deliver our vision of "improving oral and general health for a better life".

Our academic staff also join forces with leading global industry partners such as Unilever, Philips, GSK, Haleon, Mars, 3M and Ivoclar-Vivadent to develop and trial new products that will have health impacts far beyond dental issues, including in diabetes, heart and lung disease, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic kidney diseases, inflammatory bowel disease and also brain injury.

Research within '
Clinical and Experimental Sciences' encompasses programmes of activity within which we have critical mass in-house or via collaborations within and outside the College of Medical and Dental Sciences.

Programmes aim to identify and develop new and improved predictive technologies, early diagnostics and preventative therapies for patient benefit. Our research is underpinned by patient engagement and our PPIE activities span the full study design to delivery pipeline.

We are making significant advances in our understanding of complex oral as well as systemic non-communicable diseases, that are being translated to impact on whole body well-being as well as oral health.

Examples include:
- _Periodontal Research Group _- where a major strand of research is focussed on unravelling the complex stress response pathways which are active during periodontal inflammation at the molecular, cellular and clinical levels. These are also embedded into a stratified medicine approach to exploring systemic disease co-morbidity, collaboratively with medical teams and utilising the world leading clinical research infrastructure of the Inflammation Research Facility at the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the £25M Institute for Translational Medicine, where dental surgeries are embedded into the infrastructure. For ex