Bio-Informatician Postdoctoral Cancer Researcher at De Preter/TOBI-Lab

Bio-Informatician Postdoctoral Cancer Researcher at De Preter/TOBI-Lab

VIB

Ghent, Belgium

Description

The Translational Onco-genomics and Bio-Informatics lab (TOBI-lab) at the VIB-UGent is actively seeking a postdoctoral bio-informatician to advance the liquid biopsy research in the team. An important aim in TOBI is the development of novel assays for diagnosis and monitoring cancer patients in a minimally invasive way through analysis of circulating molecules in blood and other biofluids. Bioinformatic pipeline development is an indispensable aspect of this research line. The candidate will focus on the development, optimization and application of multi-modal analysis strategies and pipelines for sequencing data generated on nucleic acids isolated from biofluids (genomics, epigenomics including fragmentomics, methylomics, etc.). In addition, results will be compared and integrated with bulk and single-cell/spatial data obtained on matching tumor cells.

Your tasks

• You will play a pivotal role in the development, validation and benchmarking of bio-informatic (Nextflow) pipelines for the multi-modal analysis of (epi-)genomic sequencing data generated on biofluids from cancer patients. You will develop novel strategies to integrate the different omics data layers. You will validate results by comparing the data generated on liquid biopsies with bulk/single-cell/spatial omics data generated on the tumors. You will benchmark methods with state-of-the-art approaches;
• You will be involved in setting up the wet-lab experiments for data generation within this project;
• You will co-supervise graduate and Ph.D. students who work on the research project;
• More generally, you will co-supervise and co-support the bio-informatic work performed by the team;
• You will oversee the bio-informatic pipelines developed by the team, including their adherence to the FAIR principles;
• You will interact with collaborating research teams within the VIB and the Cancer Research Institute Ghent and with international collaborating teams and VIB core facilities. You will also interact with the data core at VIB and the IT support team.

What we are looking for

• You hold a PhD in bioinformatics (ideally obtained after the 1st of Oct 2022);
• You are an experienced user of Python, R and Nextflow;
• You have experience in pre-processing and processing large biomedical datasets, including bulk and single-cell (epi)genomics and transcriptomics data using high-performance computing;
• You have excellent written and oral English skills, as evidenced by prior peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations;
• You are a talented researcher with strong motivation and high professional standards;
• You are ambitious and passionate about research;
• You can work autonomously while having strong team player skills;
• You are a fluent communicator;
• Experience in project writing and the successful achievement of grants is a plus;
• Experience in the supervision of graduate and Ph.D. students is a plus;
• You are motivated to apply for future competitive postdoc grants (e.g. FWO).

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