Job Description

IBM is looking for a Research Staff Member in the Industrial and Applied Genomics group at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA.The researcher will be responsible for developing and conducting a program of research in bioinformatics to advance the genome and metagenomics research of food safety, drug discovery among others. The researcher will join a group of scientists and engineers studying microbial community structures connected with food safety, based on next-generation RNA and DNA sequencing.

The candidate

The successful candidate will be expected to lead world-class research on subjects that might include use of informatics to understand microbial communities, software and algorithms for informatics, statistical analysis methods, and the microbiology of food.

• A Ph.D. degree or equivalent experience; degree fields such as Biology, Biochemistry, Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, or Microbiology are preferred.
• Demonstrated creative and innovative research as evidenced by research papers in top conferences and journals that are based on applied work with novel analytical approaches and techniques.

Candidates are also expected to be well versed in modern data analysis tools such as Java, R, Matlab, Python, and/or Perl, and should be able to work with software teams towards building analytics based solutions and platforms.

IBM researchers push the boundaries of science, technology and business to make the world work better. IBM Research is a global community of forward-thinkers working towards a common goal: progress.

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• Expert on handling Next generation sequencing data
• Programming skills: Java, Python, Perl, R or equivalent languages
• Broad knowledge in statistical methods. High performance statistical computing,
• Team player, works/collaborates well with a group of diverse backgrounds
• Demonstrated research potential/record, track record of giving talks at international
• Proven collaboration and communication skills

Preferred Tech And Prof Experience

• Experience in leading interdisciplinary applied projects
• Expertise in benchtop lab biology including: Microbiology, Genetics, PCR / Quantitative PCR, Deep sequencing, Experimental design, Extraction of nucleic acid and preparation of sequencing libraries, Experience running Illumina deep sequencing machines
• Extensive expertise in computational biology / bioinformatics, Deep sequencing analysis, Acquisition of large scale data directly from the sequencer, vendor, or public depositories, experience in analysis of Illumina and PacBio sequencing data; Genomics – Assembly of both large and complex genomes and large scale assembly of microbial genomes; Metagenomics; RNA-Seq; experience in generating end-to-end automated pipelines; Large-data analytics