Seeking highly motivated postdoctoral research associate to provide genomics and bioinformatics support to ongoing research projects in the UF strawberry breeding program. The scientist must be able to learn quickly, creatively solve problems, and have a deep understand of NGS technologies. The successful candidate will be working in strawberry molecular genetics and genomics laboratory and other scientists in UF strawberry breeding program at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC), Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida.
The University of Florida (www.ufl.edu) is a Land-Grant and Sea-Grant institution, encompassing virtually all academic and professional disciplines, with an enrollment of more than 60,000 students. The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (ifas.ufl.edu) includes the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (cals.ufl.edu), the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station (research.ifas.ufl.edu), the Florida Cooperative Extension Service (extension.ifas.ufl.edu), the College of Veterinary Medicine (www.vetmed.ufl.edu), the Florida Sea Grant program (www.flseagrant.org/ ), and encompasses 17 on-campus academic departments and schools, 13 Research and Educational Centers (REC) located throughout the state, 6 Research sites/demonstration units administered by RECs or academic departments, and Florida Cooperative Extension Service offices in all 67 counties (counties operate and maintain).
Responsibilities:
The successful candidate will participate in processing and analyzing next generation sequencing data both genomic and RNA, and also characterizing the complex genome structures in the octoploid strawberry. A newly developed reference genome of octoploid strawberry is now available (unpublished), and many exciting discoveries can be achieved. This large sequence and SNP genotyping data will be applied for the discovery of traits/genes associated with fruit quality, flavor, and disease resistance for developing superior strawberry cultivar. Also, the appointee is expected to work closely with other researchers and students in the strawberry breeding program, assist in the analysis of various sequencing data.
Duration of Appointment and Salary:
The position is available immediately, and initial appointment is for two years. A renewal of the appointment will be contingent based on success of research program (individual performance and publications) and funding availability. The salary is $47,476 and commensurate with experience.
Required Skills and Background:
• PhD or equivalent in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, or Genomics.
• Extensive experience analyzing large sequencing data sets using Python or R.
• Experience with existing NGS platforms (IIumina, Ion Torrent, PacBio, etc)
• Programming skills with Java, C/C++, or Perl and efficiency in Linux/Unix operating systems.
• Experience with machine learning.
• An eagerness to dramatically improve genomics-assisted breeding tools for strawberry cultivar development.
• Excellent communication and writing skills, strong team-work spirit, and independent problem solving and self-learning abilities.
• Strong desire to be part of a world leading strawberry breeding team and publish results in peer-reviewed journals.
Desired Skills and Background:
• Previous experience providing bioinformatics supports to scientists, or postdoctoral experience in bioinformatics/genomics.
• Working or collaborative experience in plant breeding programs.
• Proficiency in analyzing large-scale sequence data from polyploid and complex genome assembly.
• Experience in RNAseq, RenSeq, Target region capture sequencing, allele mining and gene cloning from NGS data.
• Experience with other laboratory assays including real-time PCR, gene expression profiling and cloning genes.
• Understanding of gene editing methods including CRISPR.
Send a cover letter, curriculum vita, and contact information for three references to Seonghee Lee (seonghee105@ufl.edu).