Senior Bioinformatics Research Scientist – Microbial Genomics
St. Jude Children's Research HospitalAbout the role
The recently established Microbial Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics Laboratory in the new Department of Host-Microbe Interactions (HMI) at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital is looking for a Senior Bioinformatics Research Scientist to work on the analysis of microbial and host omics datasets, with a significant focus on comparative analysis of bacterial and viral genomic datasets.
The Microbial Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics Laboratory provides HMI and Center for Infectious Diseases Research (CIDR) faculty with top-notch computational biology core support for omics projects and analyses, especially genomics and transcriptomics. Our team collaborates with and provides support to researchers within the HMI and other departments, including Infectious Diseases, through CIDR to provide study design and analysis support at different stages of their research, from study conception and design, data analysis and interpretation for dissemination via talks and manuscripts, and contributing to grant proposals and manuscripts as authors or co-authors. We aim to become a leading team conducting cutting-edge microbial omics and bioinformatics research and supporting researchers within HMI, CIDR, and beyond. The laboratory is a significant initiative backed by substantial support as a part of our institutional strategic plan. The team is fully integrated in research in microbial evolution, microbial pathogenesis, virology, the microbiome, computational biology, and data sciences at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The successful candidate will join a team of Bioinformaticians and will work with other groups at St. Jude, including clinicians, basic scientists, and data scientists, to establish pipelines, analytical approaches, and best practices to facilitate data processing and analysis of microbial and host omics datasets. As a Senior Bioinformatics Research Scientist, you will perform data analysis, develop bioinformatics pipelines and analytical solutions, and play an integral role in research partnerships to explore the application of bioinformatics to omics datasets to support the needs of researchers in the HMI department, the CIDR, within the wider St Jude community, and with external collaborators beyond St Jude. The candidate will be required to follow and adhere to best practices in project management through efficient planning of projects and formulating specific milestones of research goals, monitoring of progress, anticipating and identifying barriers to success and proposing solutions, and providing informative feedback, progress reports, and summaries to the Director of the Microbial Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics Laboratory and principal investigators within HMI and CIDR. The position will report to the Director of the Microbial Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics Laboratory.
The Microbial Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics Laboratory will provide a highly collaborative and interactive environment with researchers within HMI, CIDR, and beyond. The successful candidate will have access to the state-of-the-art St Jude high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, cloud computing, and innovative tools and datasets. There will be opportunities to advance scientifically through authorships of high-profile papers depending on their specific intellectual contributions. This is an excellent position to join a newly established laboratory core team to conduct cutting-edge microbial omics and bioinformatics research and support researchers within HMI, CIDR, and St Jude to contribute to the mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to advance cures and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment.
The ideal candidate should have:
– A PhD and extensive experience in microbial bioinformatics, computational biology, and data science, with practical experience working with microbial omics datasets and familiarity with the basic biology of microbial pathogens, especially bacteria and viruses.
– A CV with a strong publication record in bioinformatics, computational biology, and data science, mainly focusing on microbial pathogens.
– Experience and keen interest in analyzing diverse and large-scale datasets, including whole genome sequencing, phylogenomics, transcriptomics (bulk and single-cell), metagenomics (16S rRNA and shotgun sequencing), transposon sequencing (Tn-seq), and metatranscriptomics using short and long-read sequencing data.
– Knowledge of other bioinformatics skills such as gen
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