Bioinformatics Research Associate I

Position: Bioinformatics Research Associate I
Location: MaRS Centre, Toronto
Department: Computational Biology (Pai Lab)
Reports To: Dr. Shraddha Pai, Principal Investigator I
Salary: Commensurate with level of experience
Hours: 35 hours/week
Job Type: On-site
Status: Full-time, Temporary (2-year contract)

The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is seeking an experienced professional to fill the key role of Bioinformatics Research Associate I within the Computational Biology Program.

This position is temporary, full-time for two-years with the possibility of conversion to a permanent position.

The Pai Lab uses cutting-edge computational and experimental genomic techniques to advance precision medicine in cancer. Our goal is to use genomics to match patients with the best treatment options, and to find novel molecular targets for precise therapy. We discover biomarkers by integrating clinical and multi-‘omic data from normal tissues and tumours, with prior knowledge of pathways, gene regulation, disease association, and druggability. We use established software workflows and develop novel algorithms for functional inference, and specialize in systems biology and network-based approaches. Our collaborations are interdisciplinary and include genome scientists, computational biologists, clinicians, and experts in drug discovery, and we are part of the world-class precision genomics community at OICR.

The successful candidate will lead or co-lead genomic analyses in lab projects. They will work closely with graduate students and computational biologists in the lab, as well as collaborators, to develop new statistical methods and software for precision genomics. This is an exciting opportunity to learn about the latest developments in precision genomics and the use of graph-based approaches for data integration, while contributing to new research in cancer genomics, and creating new tools to help scientists and clinicians understand, diagnose, and treat cancer.

New employees who are required to work at OICR offices are required to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 subject to the duty to accommodate on the basis of protected grounds pursuant to the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Fully vaccinated is defined as having received all of the required doses of a Health Canada approved vaccine and having received the final dose at least 14 days before your employment start date.

As described above, the requirement to be fully vaccinated is subject to the Ontario Human Rights Code. If the candidate is unable to receive the COVID-19 vaccine for a reason protected by the Code, requests for accommodation from the vaccine policy will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

To learn more about working at OICR, visit our career page.

The responsibilities include:

• Develop and oversee high-throughput NGS pipelines for genomic assays such as WGBS, EM-seq, RNAseq, WGS, scRNA-seq, scATAC-seq, scMultiome-seq
• Analyze sequencing data from established pipelines
• Develop new computational methods to visualize, integrate, and interpret multi-omics data
• Help manage lab servers and computational infrastructure
• Document and present results in written or oral reports to lab members
• Contribute to the codebase, development, and support of open-source software packages
• Help onboard new lab members for computational and genomic analysis

Qualifications:

• Completion of a Master’s degree in computer science, bioinformatics, data science, engineering, or similar quantitative field, or equivalent education or work experience
• Experience in programming, including in data visualization, data table manipulation, and statistics, using a language for data analytics (e.g., R, Matlab, python).
• Experience with Unix/Linux
• Demonstrated exposure to genomics data analysis
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to thrive in a collaborative, team-based environment