Outreach Lead & Curator (Scientific Associate I)

Position: Outreach Lead & Curator (Scientific Associate I)
Location: MaRS Centre, Toronto
Department: Computational Biology
Reports To: Project Manager, Reactome
Salary: Commensurate with level of experience
Hours: 35 hours/week
Job Type: Hybrid/On-site
Status: Full-time, Permanent

The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is seeking a highly motivated individual to act as Outreach Lead for the Reactome project. The position will also involve part-time curation of biological pathways.

Reactome (reactome.org) is an open access and open source curated database of human biological pathways. Pathways are assembled from the published literature by Masters- and PhD-level scientists and published alongside powerful bioinformatics analysis tools on the Reactome website. Our team consists of an international and interdisciplinary mix of biologists, software engineers, and user interface designers.

As Reactome Outreach Lead, you will work with the software and curatorial teams to coordinate all aspects of Reactome communications, including conference presentations, workshops, scientific and lay papers, and social media. You will develop education and training materials for in person and online learning, and will contribute to the documentation on the Reactome web site.

As a Reactome Curator, you will create machine-readable pathway records from the published literature using curatorial software developed by Reactome, in accordance with the comprehensive Reactome standards. We will provide you with extensive training on the Reactome data model and its associated tools.

OICR has a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy in place that requires proof of full COVID-19 vaccination or proof of a medical exemption issued pursuant to the Government of Ontario guidelines.  Accordingly, as a condition of employment, new employees who may be 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.

Your responsibilities will include:

Outreach Lead role:

• Planning and delivering training workshops on Reactome tools and application programmer interfaces (APIs),and using these in next generation sequencing analysis. This responsibility will involve multiple public presentations per year and frequent international
• Promotion of Reactome and communication of Reactome news through social media channels including Twitter and Facebook, or their successors.
• Creating and maintaining documentation and e-learning materials on our advanced tools and APIs, and their application in bioinformatic analysis.
• Direct support of user queries via email and tracker on using our APIs and advanced tools.
• Direct interaction with our development teams to fix bugs identified by users and find solutions to user problems.
• Supporting usability testing of tools and APIs.

Curator role:

• Working with the Editor-in-Chief of the Reactome project to prioritize pathways for curation, identifying research scientists to author modules related to these pathways, and curating these modules into the Reactome database.
• Identifying peer reviewers for pathway modules and shepherding them through the peer-review process.
• Observing the quality control protocol for reviewing and releasing new modules.
• Reviewing and updating previously-written modules on a timetable set by the Editor-in-Chief.
• Working with Reactome staff to improve user interfaces, data models and workflows to accomplish the pathway-based analysis of biological problems.

Required Qualifications:

• A Master’s or PhD degree or equivalent in life sciences, preferably in bioinformatics, biochemistry, molecular biology, cancer research or a related field.
• You have excellent English communication skills, both written and verbal, to facilitate effective communications with other team members and to communicate with external collaborators and users.
• You are highly self-motivated, able to work independently, and work well as a part of a team.
• You should be comfortable speaking to large audiences in an engaging manner as well as conducting teaching and tutorials in small group settings, both online and in person.
• Significant experience in teaching, training, public outreach, online help and/or event planning events is required.

Bonus (Nice-to-Have) Skills:

• Self-reliance, resourcefulness, and ability to multitask well.
• Team player open to cooperation and collaboration – Building trusting relationships with colleagues is key in our team.
• Knowledge of cancer genomics is an asset but not essential.