Computational Biologist - Boston Children's Hospital

The focus of the Sampson Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School is to discover the molecular basis of nephrotic syndrome through human genomics to inform mechanisms, treatments, and cures for this disease.  We integrate genomics data with other molecular and clinical datasets to discover the biological and clinical impact of the disease-associated genomic variants we discover.  Our research also focuses on using multiomics datasets and cellular model systems to make definitive genomic diagnoses for individual patients with nephrotic syndrome.

We now seek an enthusiastic and intellectually statistical geneticist/computational biologist interested in these broad research areas.

The applicant will have a strong understanding of human genetics, bioinformatics, and/or genome biology and skills in high-performance computing. They will use both well-established and newer methods for generation and analysis of diverse types of genomic data, including genome and exome sequencing, and bulk and single cell transcriptomics. They will drive their own projects and also support the efforts of other members of the group.

The Sampson Lab is located at Boston Children’s Hospital and is affiliated with Harvard Medical School and the Kidney Disease Initiative of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. It is well-funded through multiple Federal grants and other resources. It is a vibrant, highly collaborative, and multidisciplinary environment made up of nephrologists, computational geneticists, biostatisticians, and epidemiologists, and bench researchers.

This Computational Biologist will be responsible for:

• Designing, troubleshooting, and analysis of diverse genomic discovery efforts using our own genomic & phenotypic data & those aggregated from publicly available resources.  Involvement in studies such as GWAS, eQTL, pQTL, single-cell technologies
• Make decisions on statistical methods and data analysis plan.
• Demonstrate attention to detail and problem-solving skills.
• Leading investigations into personalized, next-generation approaches to genomic diagnosis for children with proteinuric kidney disease.
• Communication with external collaborators, and contributions to the preparation of manuscripts, grants, and presentations.
• Independent thinking and decision making as it related to genomic study design, analysis, and statistical approaches.

In order to qualify, you must have: 

• MS in genetics/genomics, biocomputing/bioinformatics, statistics, or a related field
• Experience in any of the following: human genetics/genomics, variant calling, rare diseases, single cell approaches     
• Programming experience in UNIX, R, and/or Python
• Familiarity with high-performance and/or cloud computing
• Evidence of prior publication(s) and conference/oral presentations
• Enjoyment in collaborating and interacting with others
• Minimum 2 years of prior technical experience

Preferred qualifications:

• PhD in genetics/genomics, biocomputing/bioinformatics, statistics, or a related field
• Working with bioinformatics analysis pipelines, code version control (e.g., git) tools and/or experience with standard bioinformatic tools (e.g., bcftools, htslib, samtools, PLINK, bedtools)
• Familiarity with reproducible data science using Jupyter Notebook or RMarkdown, or other
• Statistical analysis experience and/or a working understanding of biological systems

Boston Children’s Hospital offers competitive compensation and unmatched benefits including flexible schedules, affordable health, vision and dental insurance, child care and student loan subsidies, generous levels of time off, 403(b) Retirement Savings plan, Pension, Tuition and certain License and Certification Reimbursement, cell phone plan discounts and discounted rates on T-passes. Experience the benefits of passion and teamwork.