Salary: £33,000 – £40,000 plus a Personal Development budget of £4,667

Do you want to lead an exciting project breaking new ground in the aviation industry? Do you have a background in biosensors, biochemistry or microbiology or a related background? Do you have an MSc + 3 years of experience or are you educated to PhD level? Are you interested in the industrial sector?

The University of Leeds has an exciting opportunity for you to ‘fast-track’ your career in industry by leading a high-profile, strategically important project from start to completion. Through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), you will work in with an industry leading company in Aeroservices Ltd., and a cutting-edge team of academics at the Schools of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Chemical and Process Engineering to develop a novel fuel testing kit that overtakes the current market leader by offering microbial contamination specificity as well as greater sensitivity, robustness, in-field deployability, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness.

Current growth projections expect the fuel sector to reach £320 Billion by 2026 and with this, the market opportunity for microbial contamination testing is also expected to grow significantly. Current testing kits either lack sensitivity to microbial spoilage or the Time-to-Result is too long. Furthermore, they are unable to specifically identify microbial species, which is essential in developing best-practice fuel storage management protocols which are economically and environmentally valuable. Having a global presence in > 90 countries, distributing products for over 125 OEMs to major flag carriers such as Emirates, Qatar, Ethiopian, Virgin Atlantic and others, Aeroservices are well positioned to take advantage of this market opportunity and your role in this KTP will be to embed knowledge in the company around biosensor technologies that enable Aeroservices to expand their R&D capabilities and to develop a best-in-sector fuel testing kit that will set the ‘gold standard’ in the aviation sector for years to come.

Working with the University of Leeds, you will have access to first class facilities where you will be able to conduct multi-stage experiments with cutting-edge equipment and insight from academics with vast experience in biosensors,  bionanotechnology, microbiology and chemical engineering techniques.

To explore the post further or for any queries you may have, please contact:

Academic Supervisors

Dr. Ryan F. Seipke (University of Leeds), 

Associate Professor in Molecular Microbiology

Tel: +44 113 3435604

Email: [email protected]  

or

Prof. Lars Jeuken (University of Leiden), 

Visiting Professor of Molecular Biophysics at the University of Leeds

Email: [email protected]  

Company Supervisor

Steven Watts (Aeroservices), Chief Operating Officer

Tel :  +44 113 234 3130

Email: [email protected]

KTP Office / HR

James Hartford

Innovation Support Coordinator (University of Leeds)

Email: [email protected]