Postdoctoral Researcher

More than 250 million people are chronically infected with Hepatitis B virus (HBV) with no effective cure. My lab is part of the Toronto Centre for Liver Disease, one of the largest liver clinics in North America, with an active clinical trial research program testing novel hepatitis B therapies in Phase 1- 3 clinical trials. New studies are incorporating longitudinal liver sampling with single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) to better understand the intrahepatic immune response to novel treatments in the context of viral control and liver inflammation.

We are looking for a bioinformatician with demonstrated experience single-cell RNA sequencing analysis and an interest in incorporating new artificial intelligence tools into the analysis pipeline. The anticipation is that this qualified person will be able to work with large scRNAseq datasets with cell numbers >3,000,000 cells and be able to code in relevant languages to incorporate the latest analysis tools.

This is an opportunity to work with state-of-the-art data in the context of novel drugs in early-stage clinical trials. The position will involve industry collaboration with the expectation of academic publication. There will also be internal opportunities for collaboration in our basic research projects focused HBV pathogenesis using similar samples.

The successful applicant will be expected

• To use/develop pipelines for large, single-cell dataset alignment and quality control.
• To cluster and annotate immune cell populations
• To use advanced analysis tools beyond basic differential gene expression and pathway analysis
• Integrate clinical and transcriptomic data for analysis using machine learning and novel artificial intelligence models.
• To effectively visualize and communicate single-cell analysis outputs to bench scientists
• Mentor graduate students in bioinformatics analysis
• Organize and maintain datasets on the storage archive
• To use the UHN high-performance computing cluster

• PhD received within 5 years (or MD received within 10 years) in relevant field of study
• Published experience in scRNAseq data analysis
• Interest in human immunology and willingness to learn about hepatitis B infection
• Ability to work independently from home and onsite
• Ability to advise/mentor fellow lab members in bioinformatics analysis strategies
• Problem-solving initiative
• Attention to detail and strong organizational skills
• Good verbal and written communication skills