"Collaborative Postdoctoral Scholar: Computational Biologist/Bioinformatician at NSF-NCEMS"

Job Details

The U.S. National Science Foundation National Synthesis Center for Emergence in the Molecular and Cellular Sciences (NCEMS) seeks an outstanding scientist to fill a Collaborative Postdoctoral Scholar position dedicated to advancing the collaborative research of the Center’s Working Groups. NCEMS is an interdisciplinary research center positioned at the interface of data science and molecular and cellular biology. The Center provides leadership in the integration of diverse, publicly available datasets, enabling cross-disciplinary teams of scientists to synthesize knowledge and pursue fundamental questions at the forefront of the life sciences.

About the Position: Collaborative Postdoctoral Scholars play a supporting role in enabling the research efforts of Working Groups supported by NCEMS, typically supporting two working group efforts simultaneously. In contrast to a conventional postdoctoral position, in this collaborative postdoctoral position the candidate works as part of a team to further the research project and in many cases is not the lead. This position has the potential to be a hybrid of remote and on-site work, with a minimum requirement of 3 days per week on-site at the Penn State University Park campus. This position does not permit fully remote work. This is a fixed-term appointment funded for one year from the date of hire with an excellent chance for renewal, as NCEMS is in year two of its five year grant.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with center working groups to develop and implement computational methods for integrating, analyzing, and visualizing complex molecular and cellular biology data in support of their research goals.
• Provide technical experience in the wrangling, harmonizing, and standardizing of existing biological datasets, including advanced experience with next-generation sequencing data. Implement comprehensive quality control measures to ensure data accuracy and consistency.
• Provide expert advice to working groups and associated analysis in the area of evolutionary biology, including e.g. construction of phylogenetic trees and population genetics analyses.
• Offer support and guidance on the selection and application of bioinformatics and computational biology tools and pipelines, especially those related to sequence alignment, gene expression analysis, and variant calling, following open and reproducible science best practices.
• Develop and maintain quality assurance protocols for workflows to guarantee the reliability and reproducibility of results.
• Have hands-on experience in data processing starting from raw data for multiple modern techniques including examples from the list: RNA-Seq, single-cell RNA-Seq (scRNA-Seq), ChIP-Seq, DNA-Seq, ATAC-Seq, and Hi-C.
• Support the publication of intermediate data products, code, and documentation.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in bioinformatics, computational biology, and available biological datasets.

Education and Experience:

• PhD in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related field.
• Solid foundation and expertise in Python and/or R for data analysis, scripting, and statistical modeling.
• Mastery using bioinformatics or computational biology software (e.g. BLAST, GATK, Bioconductor).
• Expertise in data wrangling, harmonization, big data analytics, ETL processes, and extracting meaningful insights from complex datasets.
• Experience working with large-scale molecular and cellular datasets/databases (next-generation sequencing)—including genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and lipidomic, epigenomic, interactomic and structural, glycomic, and single-cell multi-omics data.
• Hands-on experience with the Git version control systems and Data Version Control (DVC).
• Understanding of genetic principles, molecular biology techniques, and genomic databases.
• Experience developing new bioinformatics tools as dictated by research needs.
• Publications in peer-reviewed journals demonstrating contributions to the field.

Candidates must also have impeccable ethics and integrity with a strong work ethic, strong interpersonal and written skills, and the ability to work well in a team environment.

How to Apply: Applicants must submit their materials through the Penn State Careers site under job posting REQ_0000071360-1. Required documents include: A current Curriculum Vitae (CV) or Resume and a cover letter detailing the candidate’s interest in the role.

Compensation and Benefits: The position offers a competitive annual salary of $70,000, consistent with Penn State postdoctoral compensation guidelines, along with a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, and retirement plans (see https://hr.psu.edu/current-employee/benefits/post-doc-appts).