Data curator/Bioinformatician in ageing research

We are looking to hire one research assistant as a data curator/bioinformatician in ageing research. The post is funded by a EU POC-A1-A1.1.4-E- 2015 Competitiveness Operational Programme 2014-2020 award, for the development of a „Multi-omics prediction system for prioritization of gerontological interventions” (GERONTOMICS). The duration of the post is one year, extendable for up to 2 years, based on satisfactory performance. The selected candidate will work full-time in the project.

GERONTOMICS aims to use a systems biology approach to combine data from different “omics” levels (e.g.: genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, etc) and from various models of ageing in order to create a large-scale data-driven analysis and prediction platform for experimental interventions in gerontology.

The project involves both computational aspects (data aggregation and processing, multidimensional data analysis, network-based methods, systems theory approaches, etc) as well as wet-lab experiments (some of the predicted interventions will be tested in vivo), with a highly multi-disciplinary team.

Candidates should be highly motivated, with a PhD (or studying for the PhD title) in a field related to Gerontology and should already possess experience in ageing research. An excellent command of the English language is required for our multidisciplinary group. Additional competencies in bioinformatics, statistics, data science or computer science are an advantage but are not strictly required for this job.

Under the project director’s supervision, the research assistant will collaborate with other team members to curate ageing-related datasets and scientific papers. The researcher will also support the group with manual annotations for various datasets and will participate in experiment and analysis design. Depending on his/her prior experience, the research assistant could also carry out bioinformatics analyses on the available data or wet-lab experiements.

As a data curator the candidate’s responsibility will be to:

• Collaborate with the project director to design computational analyses and experiments,
• Review scientific literature on various ageing-related topics,
• Be involved in data and knowledge curation
• Ocasionally, carry out bioinformatics/statistical analyses for the datasets of interest
• Support the rest of the team with ageing-related insights to direct the implementation of machine learning models, including deep artificial neural networks;
• Integrate and interpret results from multiple analyses,
• Contribute to the mathematical/computational models in relation to the biology of ageing,
• Publish and present results to the group, at scientific meetings and in scientific papers

While not the main focus of the post, being in an interdisciplinary team will also offer the successful candidate the opportunity to train in other fields than his/her own (e.g. theoretical and experimental biology, bioinformatics, computer science, machine learning and systems biology).

The post will require the successful candidate to be able to present his/her work to the rest of the group and occasionally might also require him/her to attend and present at national and international meetings. Depending on the existing skill set and the candidate’s career goals, attendance to various training courses could also be available.