The Zero Childhood Cancer (ZCC) Program is a national trial being led by Children’s Cancer Institute, and Kids Cancer Centre, Sydney Children’s Hospital, to identify individual cancer therapy for children, adolescents and young adults with high-risk cancer where the expected survival rate is less than 30%. The objective of the program is to prolong survival and reduce treatment side effects. The data generated by the ZCC trial is globally unique for paediatric cancer.
With the commoditisation of large-scale genomics, the number of factors and variables to be considered in clinical decision-making is beyond the capacity of the individual clinician, pathologist, medical scientist, or traditional statistical methods. This has now grown to rely heavily on complex computational approaches. These sophisticated modelling and interpretive systems will be an essential requirement to support the implementation of a precision medicine model on a large scale in a complex healthcare system long term, which will be applied to paediatric oncology, and inform the development of similar models in adult oncology and other clinical care pathways in a sustainable manner.
The ZCC Program is generating vast amounts of genomic, transcriptomic, epigenetic, and proteomic data alongside drug efficacy data from in vitro laboratory screening and PDX models, and critically the clinical data for individual patients. Modelling and integrating these complex data to derive research insights and informative treatment recommendations remains challenging. Children’s Cancer Institute must be in a position to engage with, explore, and link data, to invent solutions for the future, to generate new knowledge, new basic and translational research insights, and develop an expanding precision medicine program.
We are seeking a leader in computational biology, who will be responsible for developing a paediatric oncology computational biology group, and designing, implementing, and executing a training program aimed at building capacity, knowledge, and expertise across institute research staff in bioinformatics and study design. Leveraging the data generated by the ZCC trial, and other initiatives of both Children’s Cancer Institute and its clinical and research partner organisations, they will be responsible for coordinating and leading relevant projects and activities which will form the basis for a new program of research within Children’s Cancer Institute. They will establish the analytical and computational approaches to underpin our core predictive analytical capacity, and lead the ZCC Program’s data mining effort. The role will also share a collective responsibility and leadership in the broader objectives of Children’s Cancer Institute, ensuring we build a strong reputation for excellence in computational biology that will transform clinical practice on the global stage.
Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Math, Bioinformatics, Biology or other relevant scientific discipline or equivalent experience is required
Strong background in bioinformatics with a minimum of 10 years experience
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