Research Associate, Precision Genomics for Cancer

Duties/Accountabilities: 

• Design, documentation, and analysis of experiments to test new assays and new methods

• Summary and presentation of experimental findings to stakeholders

• Modification and development of bioinformatic pipelines to analyze genomic data yielding clinical grade variant and expression data

• Assist in choosing and modifying gene targets and samples for assay development

• Analysis of NGS data to investigate clonality, somatic hypermutation, microsattelite instability and intergenic translocations

• Development and assessment of bioinformatic tools for RNA-Seq expression analysis and variant calling

• Development and assessment of bioinformatic tools for determining the clinical significance of detected variants

• Statistical analysis to determine analytical sensitivity and specificity of obtained results

• Development of software pipelines for analyzing next-generation sequencing data

• Support of research staff by providing analysis and software tools

• Contributions to the writing of research publications

Qualifications:

• PhD in Bioinformatics, Microbiology, Biochemistry or a related field

• Two (2) years of recent related experience or an equivalent combination of education, training and relevant experience

• A Master’s degree in a relevant field would be considered 

   

Skills and Abilities: 

• Knowledge of RNA-Seq and other genomic data analysis, including expression analysis, structural variant detection, and variant-calling.

• Experience working in a Unix environment, including experience with shell scripting and common command-line tools

• Expertise in one or more scripting language(s) (e.g. Python)

• Experience working with next-generation sequencing data and tools (i.e. tools for alignment and variant-calling)

• Expertise in statistical analysis using modern computational tools.  Experience with any relevant tools will be considered, but R and Python are preferred

• Experience writing reports of results in accurate and concise language; expertise in scientific/technical writing is required

• Experience with methods in high-dimensional data analysis for bioinformatics such as clustering, machine learning and data mining would be assets

• Experience with software testing and cluster computing would be assets

• Familiarity with cancer genetics would be an asset, as would a history of publications in relevant fields.

The successful candidate will also have:

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

• Demonstrated interpersonal skills including the ability to work effectively with others in a team environment.

• Demonstrated ability to efficiently organize work assignments and establish priorities. 

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority.