Doctoral Fellow: Accelerating Enzyme Evolution for Chemical Development: Intelligent Navigation of the Sequence Space - 3 year fixed term contract

Doctoral Fellow: Accelerating Enzyme Evolution for Chemical Development: Intelligent Navigation of the Sequence Space - 3 year fixed term contract

Location: The Discovery Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge, UK

Salary: £40,000 gross (subject to deductions in line with UK policy) plus benefit fund and bonus.

Purpose of the role:

A doctoral position is available for 3 years to work with AstraZeneca (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Early Chemical Development, Biocatalysis Team) and Professor Florian Hollfelder at the Biochemistry Department of Cambridge University (https://hollfelder.bioc.cam.ac.uk/).

The project is part of the Horizon Europe Eu Marie Curie Network MetaExplore (www.metaexplore.eu/) and involves collaborations with various EU and UK groups on harnessing environmental sources for novel biocatalysts that may play a role in future sustainable processes with higher resource and energy efficiency.

A major barrier to the wider application of biocatalysis in Pharma is the time required to optimise poor enzyme scaffolds into industrially viable biocatalysts via directed evolution. Even with state‑of‑the‑art platforms for library production, screening, and evaluation, timelines for an evolution cycle remain non compatible with the often-accelerated timelines of compound manufacturing campaigns.

This mismatch underscores the need for a new framework that avoids inefficient exploration of the protein fitness landscape, enabling protein engineers to navigate faster trajectories toward high-fitness solutions across sequence space. The goal is not necessarily to shorten each evolutionary round, but to improve hit quality, increase success rates, and minimize evolutionary dead ends.

Secondments: Drop-Tech Ltd (Cambridge, UK), University of Cambridge (Cambridge, UK) and EMBL-EBI (Hinxton, UK). Timings of these secondments are to be confirmed.

Key responsibilities:

We propose leveraging microfluidics and next-generation sequencing to generate expansive, high-resolution datasets suitable for machine learning–guided directed evolution. This approach will accelerate navigation of high-dimensional sequence space while reducing design–build–test iterations required to deliver industrially viable biocatalysts.

Essential skills:

• Educated to a first (or upper second) class degree in Chemistry, Biochemistry or a related relevant subject.

• Familiarity with molecular and chemical biology techniques.

• An interdisciplinary and collaborative research approach.

• Developing bibliography of research publications.

Desirable:

• Experience in bioinformatics and especially AI/ML.

• Experience in next-generation sequencing.

• Experience in DNA library preparation.

• Experience in assay development.

• Experience in high-throughput screening and analysis of large datasets.

• Experience in UPLC and SFC.

• Experience in microfluidics.

Candidates must:

• Be - at the date of recruitment - a doctoral candidate (i.e., not already in possession of a doctoral degree).

• Be - at the date of recruitment - formally admitted to a PhD programme leading to the award of a degree in at least one EU Member State or Horizon Europe associated country.

• For that purpose, candidates must meet the national requirements for doctoral enrolment in the host country. Proof of admission must be provided prior to the start of the contract.

• For DC12, it is expected that the candidate enrols the UC3M Doctoral Program (Signal Processing and Communications Engineering or Biomedical Science and Technology)

• Not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the UK for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before the recruitment date — unless as part of a compulsory national service or a procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention.

• Be working exclusively for the action.

For more information about MetaExplore, please visit: https://metaexplore.eu/

Date Posted

30-Apr-2026

Closing Date

14-May-2026

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