Jobs

Postdoctoral fellow in multi-omics microbiome bioinformatics: Denmark

The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research is seeking a candidate to fill a time-limited 2-year position, with possibilities of extension, to work on computational analysis of multi-omics data from the human gut microbiome. The position is in the Microbiome Systems Biology group led by Associate Professor Manimozhiyan Arumugam. The starting date is 1 August 2018 or as soon as possible thereafter.
Background
The human microbiota, the collection of trillions of microbes inhabiting the human body, has a strong influence on human health and diseases. The Arumugam group investigates the role of gut microbiota in several diseases – including type 2 diabetes, obesity, liver fibrosis, colorectal cancer and multiple sclerosis – using human cohorts and animal models. These studies involve integrated analysis of multi-omics data (including metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, host genetics, and host transcriptomics) and clinical/metabolic phenotypes to better understand the role of gut microbiota in diseases. The group has access to a high-performance computing cluster with more than 500 CPUs to support these and other computational projects.  The advertised position relates to the GALAXY project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 framework. GALAXY investigates the gut and liver axis in alcoholic liver fibrosis using host-microbial multi-omics consisting genetics, microRNAs, metabolomics, gut metagenomics (shotgun sequencing), gut metatranscriptomics. Successful candidate will be integrating this multi-omics data in collaboration with the workpackage leader European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and other project partners in GALAXY.
 
Job Description  
The position is a 2 year postdoctoral fellowship in computational biology under the supervision of Associate Professor Manimozhiyan Arumugam, where the candidate will be responsible for developing novel tools to analyze microbiome and multi-omics data in the context of alcoholic liver fibrosis, while also incorporating and improving existing state-of-the-art tools. He/she is expected to participate in and lead existing projects within GALAXY, and is highly encouraged to initiate new cutting-edge research projects. He/she is also expected to interact and collaborate with other medical researchers, biologists, and bioinformaticians in the Section, the Centre, and the GALAXY consortium, to enhance and ensure proper interpretation of experimental results.
Qualification requirements 
In connection with the appointment to the post, special importance will be attached to the applicant having the professional and personal qualifications stated below:
  • PhD in bioinformatics, or in computer science (informatics) with experience in bioinformatics research, or in biology with strong experience in software development
  • academic preparation as well as experience in machine learning and statistical analysis
  • experience in handling next-generation sequencing data
  • strong programming skills in C/C++, Java, Perl, or Python
  • experience in statistical computing environments such as R
  • experience in high performance computing environment using any flavour of UNIX
  • an excellent research record exemplified by strong publications
  • strong communication skills in English, both spoken and written, are essential
The following qualifications are highly preferred, but not required. Candidates who possess any of these qualifications are encouraged to highlight them in the application:
  • basic understanding of human disease biology and/or microbiology
  • experience in analyzing metagenomic datasets from human gut microbiota
  • experience in handling multi-omics data, including metabolomics and proteomics
  • experience in distributed and cloud computing technologies
  • familiarity with bioinformatics programming environments such as BioPerl/BioPython/BioRuby
Questions
For further information, please contact Associate Professor Manimozhiyan Arumugam at arumugam@sund.ku.dk.
Further details
Share this opportunity