We are looking for a talented bioinformatics research scientist to help us to conquer the frontiers of biomedicine questions with the power of efficient computational tools and new experimental platforms. This role provides a competitive salary and benefits, and most importantly a unique opportunity to collaborate with world-class researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard community.
About us
The Genomics and Bioinformatics Hub (https://bioinformatics.bwh.harvard.edu) is a newly established, well-funded program providing bioinformatics research, services, and training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), a world-leading center of excellence in academic medicine and research. The goal of the Genomics and Bioinformatics Hub is to bridge the gap between neuroscientists and computational scientists to their mutual benefit and to support cutting-edge, highly quantitative biomedical research. The Hub will create and maintain bioinformatics tools and databases and will support studies in basic, translational, and clinical neurosciences using external and in-house computational techniques. While the primary scientific focus is on brain diseases and fundamental neuroscience, the Hub provides opportunities for collaboration and bioinformatics services for all research scientists in BWH, Harvard, and potentially with our industry collaborators.
About you
You have a background in bioinformatics, computer science, or quantitative science and a strong interest in working with medical doctors and/or biological scientists to support their research. You enjoy solving scientific questions with computational skills. You are likely an active user of biostars.org. You are an independent learner, are keen to learn and apply new methods, and are motivated to continually expand your skills. You have good coding and data management habits that enable reproducible research. You are a regular user of git or GitHub. You are comfortable at the command line. You know how to debug. You are time-sensitive and able to simultaneously work on multiple projects and deadlines. You like to collaborate with an interdisciplinary team. You can integrate your knowledge of biology, genetics, and cell biology with your computational knowledge to excel at communicating with programmers and wet-lab scientists alike.
The position is based at the new Hale Building for Transformative Medicine (BTM) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The successful candidate will be appointed to the BWH Medical Staff as a Research Associate, and the Department of Neurology will propose that s/he be appointed as a Research Associate at the Harvard Medical School (HMS); however, final approval of this appointment rests with HMS.
Responsibilities and Duties
Reporting to the Hub director, and coordinating closely with other Hub members, the applicant will work on all aspects of the hub mission, providing expert bioinformatics support and promoting the hub within the BWH research community. S/he will be expected to develop collaborations and connections with researchers across multiple departments, become informed about their work, and contribute to the overall development of the hub strategy. Specific duties will include the following:
- Meeting with the clients, to understand their projects, and providing the best estimate of workload in bioinformatics, independently or together with the Hub director.
- Using existing bioinformatics tools or pipelines to perform standard next-generation sequencing (NGS) data analysis, incl. genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, and others.
- Developing or adapting new algorithms and pipelines to support customized data analysis.
- Documenting all work thoroughly and providing manuscript-level reporting of final analyses and results.
- Coordinating with the IT Research Computing group to ensure consistent computing resources and data storage.
- Providing basic and advanced bioinformatics training to students and researchers in BWH, building on the success of our existing Bioinformatics Club (http://bioinformatics.bwh.harvard.edu/training). The research scientist is expected to assist the Director in maintaining the training environment.
Qualifications
We are looking for a candidate with the following skills and experience:
- Master’s or doctoral degree in a related field (Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Genomics, Statistics, Engineering, etc.). For a Master's degree, at least 1yr research experience is expected.
- Strong computational genomics experience in at least one of the following NGS techniques: Single-cell and bulk tissue RNA-Seq, spatial transcriptomics, small RNA-Seq, ATAC-Seq, ChIP-Seq, whole-genome sequencing (WGS), whole-exome sequencing (WES), Hi-C, etc.
- Fluent coding/debugging skills in R, Linux bash, and one of the languages (Python, Perl, C / C++, MATLAB, or Java)
- Good code/pipeline management habits (e.g., well documentation, comments, version controlling)
- Good spoken and written communication skills in English.
- At least one first-authored or co-authored paper is accepted or published in an English-language journal.
- Research experience in molecular biology is a plus.
- Experience in workflow/pipeline construction (e.g., Nextflow, Snakemake, CWL/WDL), cloud computing (e.g., AWS, GCP), Docker, or Conda is a plus.
- Statistics background is a plus
- Training/teaching experience is a plus
The abilities to generate summary reports and communicate with lab scientists effectively, excellent time management, and adaptive attitudes to new technologies and tools are key characteristics of an ideal candidate.
Informal inquiries may be directed to Xianjun Dong, Ph.D., Director of Genomics and Bioinformatics Hub (xdong@rics.bwh.harvard.edu), or to Charles Jennings, Ph.D., Executive Director, Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases (cgjennings@bwh.harvard.edu).
We expect to fulfill the position as soon as possible. For consideration for this position, please email (1) your CV, (2) a cover letter outlining your motivation, goals, strength, and weakness, and (3) contact information for three references to Dr. Xianjun Dong (xdong@rics.bwh.harvard.edu), and cc to our administrative assistant Sherri Schwaninger at sschwaninger@bwh.harvard.edu.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, disability unrelated to job requirements, genetic information, military service, or other protected status.
