Dalhousie University and Memorial University of Newfoundland have partnered through The Terry Fox Research Institute’s Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network to harmonize research methods and create platforms, infrastructure, and governance structures that will help accelerate the implementation of precision medicine in Atlantic Canada.
This partnership includes the development of innovative bioinformatics pipelines to analyze and manage high-throughput colon and lung cancer sequencing datasets produced by our consortium. Our aim is to better understand the hereditary and environmental contributions to the predisposition, genesis and development of these diseases, as well as treatment responses. For that purpose, the consortium is generating clinically-annotated multi-omics datasets ranging from genomics, transcriptomics, methylomics and microbiomics.
We are therefore looking for two full-time postdoctoral bioinformaticians to join this regional effort for mining, analyzing, and interpreting this information.
We are looking for candidates who are collaborative and enthusiastic with the following qualifications:
• A PhD in a relevant field (e.g. bioinformatics, biostatistics, computer sciences, molecular biology)
• Prior experience applying bioinformatics to your own research
• Working proficiency in R, Python or similar programming languages
• Working knowledge of statistics as applied in a biomedical research setting
• Ability to work on server/cluster/cloud systems
• Familiarity with database technologies (ex. SQL) is a plus
We search for candidates with:
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English
• Interest and preferably also experience in colorectal and/or lung cancer research
• Good teamworking skills
• The ability to work independently in a multi-disciplinary and multi-location environment
In this position, candidates will:
• Analyze and integrate high-throughput sequencing data (e.g., DNA-seq, RNA-seq, Methyl-seq, Microbiome-seq)
• Derive experimentally testable hypotheses and molecular insight from the integrated analyses of high-throughput patient and experimental data
• Communicate findings to clinical and experimental collaborators
• Contribute to scientific discussions within the consortium, and in the greater community
• With guidance/coaching, develop yourself personally and professionally for a long-term career in biomedical research
We are also interested in hybrid wet/dry-lab molecular biologists seeking to make a full-time transition to computational biology.
For any questions, you can contact the following projects’ leaders:
• Thomas Belbin, Associate Professor and GSK Research Chair, Memorial University (tom.belbin@med.mun.ca)
• Touati Benoukraf, Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Bioinformatics for Personalized Medicine, Memorial University (tbenoukraf@mun.ca)
• Daniel Gaston, Assistant Professor, Dalhousie University (daniel.gaston@dal.ca)
If you are interested, please contact Neetu Singh at neetus@mun.ca (with the email subject “Bioinformatics MoH-ACC Application”), and include a detailed CV, GitHub link and contact information of at least two referees (including that of your current / most recent position). Please also provide a description of your research interests, including how your own experience would augment/complement our ongoing work. We will only contact candidates who are shortlisted.