The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is looking to fill an existing vacancy for an Early Career or Mid-Career Principal Investigator (PI) in Computational Biology to undertake world-class cancer research. We welcome applications from individuals at all career stages, including those wishing to establish their first research lab. The Computational Biology Program develops and applies data analysis approaches to advance OICR’s strategic priority on early cancer detection and interception. We seek to strengthen and expand our existing expertise in cancer genomics, statistical genetics, next-generation sequence analysis, biological knowledge bases and pathway/network analysis. We are particularly interested in, but not limited to, research that complements these areas, including applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning (e.g. for digital histopathology, genomic variant effect prediction, drug target identification or the accurate prediction of genetic and chemical perturbations of biological pathways), and modelling and interpreting cancer evolution.
The PI will be expected to mentor trainees, to build collaborations both within and outside the OICR community, and to work with FACIT, OICR's commercialization partner, to translate research findings into real-world products and services. In addition to base funds provided by the Institute to support the PI's salary and core personnel, the PI is expected to raise additional research funds from external competitive granting agencies. OICR will assist the PI in obtaining a faculty appointment at the University of Toronto or another affiliated academic institution.
Housed within OICR's Adaptive Oncology theme, the Computational Biology Program provides a robust intellectual environment with multiple investigators working with technologies ranging from spatial 'omics to large language models of clinical records. An institutional cluster comprising ~9,000 CPU threads, and 18 GPU servers with a total of 36 NVIDIA CUDA cards as well as a large OpenStack virtualization environment, is available to support analysis by members of the Program. In addition, extensive compute resources, including large GPU clusters, are available to OICR faculty via Canada's Digital Research Alliance.
OICR is a multi-disciplinary, team-science-driven translational research institute with PIs working in the areas of medical imaging instrumentation, robotics, drug design and development, biomarker discovery and assay development, spatial biology, and genomics. In addition to the facilities provided by the Computational Biology Program, the candidate will have access to a series of technology platforms for large-scale molecular data generation ranging from whole genome sequencing of challenging clinical specimens, to spatial transcriptomics and proteomics, cell-free DNA analysis, long-read sequencing, and digital histopathology. OICR develops and hosts multiple biobanks comprising hundreds of thousands of tissue and blood specimens, including the Ontario Health Study and the Ontario Tumour Bank. In addition, OICR develops and operates multiple data-rich biological databases including the international ICGC-ARGO Cancer Genome data platform, the Ontario Hereditary Cancer Research Network, and the Ontario node of the TFRI Marathon of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Centre Network. We are the host institution for the Global Alliance for Genomics in Health and a co-developer of the Pan-Canadian Genome Library. Finally, we believe in open-source and community development and are a signatory to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
Please visit oicr.on.ca/research-portfolio/ for details on our research portfolio.
For more information about OICR, please visit the website at www.oicr.on.ca.
To learn more about working at OICR, visit our career page.
• A PhD or MD with a proven track record in computational biology, bioinformatics, or biostatistics
• International recognition and a strong publication record of relevance, proven leadership and management experience including the building of strong research teams, as well as a strong record of grant-funding and mentorship
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
oicr.bamboohr.com/careers/442
Please attach the following to your application:
• A covering letter, including the names of three potential referees
• A complete academic CV
• A two to four page proposed research document, including a section highlighting relevance of the proposed studies to cancer