Computational Scientist

The Barthel Laboratory is a cancer genomics lab focused on utilizing state-of-the-art genomic approaches to study the development and evolution of glial brain tumors (gliomas). The lab has a particular interest in the fundamental role of telomere dysfunction in glioma development, but is generally interested in all aspects of tumor evolution including but not limited to longitudinal studies of therapy response assessed by genomic analyses of tissue samples and liquid biopsies. The lab has received both government (eg. National Institutes of Health) and philanthropic funding for several translational and basic science research projects in this domain. We are looking for a talented, passionate and highly motivated individual to enrich our team to lead the computational efforts in our group.

Position Summary

The Computational Scientist will work on multiple projects analyzing biomedical data by applying existing tools, informatics resources, and developing new software and tools. They will be responsible for automating, optimizing and customizing existing bioinformatics workflows; implementing novel analytical approaches and developing professional-grade reusable software resources for medium-to-large scale research projects. They will be involved in all aspects of data analysis and interpretation and provide mentorship to trainees looking to acquire dry-lab skills. They will collaborate with bench scientists to validate computational findings using molecular biology approaches to develop in vitro models to test new hypotheses

Location

We are located at the Translational Genomics Institute (TGen), a non-profit research institute located in Phoenix, Arizona that is set to the backdrop of the stunning Sonoran Desert. Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the nation, the fastest growing for 5 years in a row and ranked 5th in the Nation as an Emerging Life Science Market. Phoenix's unprecedented growth in the life sciences is fueled by over $3.25 billion in capital investment which has led to over 5 million square feet of new bioscience healthcare facilities constructed since 2019. At the heart of this growth is a 30-acre urban life sciences center - the Phoenix Biomedical Campus (PBC), at which TGen sits at the center.

Phoenix additionally boasts an incredibly comfortable lifestyle averaging over 300 sunny days a year, multiple mountain ranges in near proximity and some of the most magnificent national and state parks in the nation within driving range. The airport is ranked as one of the best in the country in terms of passenger satisfaction owing to fast moving lines at security checkpoints, and moreover is a mere 10-minute drive from TGen, making traveling to anywhere in the world a breeze.

Education and Preferred Qualifications

Master’s Degree and/or PhD in Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Bioengineering, Computational Biology or related field and 2+ years of experience in an applied research environment in biomedical data analysis

• Comfortable navigating Linux/UNIX based operating systems (eg. CentOS, Red Hat) and building shell scripts for data processing
• Confident operating high-performance cluster systems via schedulers such as SLURM or Torque/PBS
• Experience with scientific computing and data visualization tools such as R, Python or MATLAB and a good understanding of relevant statistics
• Exposure to biological software development in one or more programming languages, such as Python, C++, Java or related languages
• Experience building workflows using custom scripts and/or workflow management tools (eg. Nextflow, Snakemake, Common Workflow Language)
• Good coding practices utilizing versioning (eg. Git, Subversion) and writing detailed documentation
• Experience in biological data analysis and interpretation such as sequence alignment, data quality control, gene expression analysis, variant calling, phylogenetics
• Familiarity with various biomedical databases such as UCSC Genome Browser, Ensembl, TCGA/ICGC, GTex and other databases