Research Fellow in Cancer Bioinformatics

Job Title: Research Fellow in Cancer Bioinformatics
Department: Physiology and Medical Physics
Reporting to: Dr Simon Furney
Location: York House, Dublin 2
Contract/Duration: Specified purpose contract for 3 years
Remuneration: Research Fellow scale (Level 3) point 1 (€59,227)
Start Date: Autumn 2023

RCSI is a community of academic, research and professional staff working collaboratively to lead the world to better health. Here, you will thrive in an innovative and inclusive atmosphere and your personal development and wellbeing will be supported. We invite you to join us to help deliver on our exciting mission “To educate, nurture and discover for the benefit of human health”. We seek candidates whose experience to date has prepared them to contribute to our commitment to the “Race Equality Action Plan 2021-2024” at RCSI.

Summary of Post
This is an exciting opportunity to join the Genomic Oncology Research Group led by Dr. Simon Furney. I am seeking an experienced, ambitious, and motivated Research Fellow in Cancer Bioinformatics with a passion for cancer biology and genomics. The aim of the research project is to develop a novel method to prioritise driver non-coding somatic mutations in colorectal cancer, building on my previous experience (PMIDs: 26598542, 28056774).

The project will integrate human and mouse genomic and epigenomic data with colorectal cancer whole genome sequencing data, and develop driver non-coding somatic mutation prioritisation approaches using machine-learning and other methods.

The appointed candidate will be expected to have several years postdoctoral research experience. The candidate will design and implement the research programme in association with Dr. Furney.

The research focus of Dr. Furney’s group is the use of cancer genome data to identify mechanisms of tumour development and evolution, and to develop novel approaches for the interpretation of cancer genomes. The group is involved in multiple national and international research collaborations. Dr. Furney has been funded by the European Commission, Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board, the Wellcome Trust, and the Irish Cancer Society, and has published his research in journals including Nature, Cancer Discovery, Nature Methods, Genome Research and npj Genomic Medicine.

Specifically, the duties of the post are:

• Analysis of ENCODE epigenomic data
• Analysis of cancer whole genome mutational data
• Intergration of epigenomic and genomic data
• Development of bioinformatic prioritisation approaches
• Preparation of research manuscripts

Qualifications/Experience – (Essential):

• Ph.D. degree in cancer bioinformatics / computational biology / genomics or a related discipline

Knowledge & Experience – (Essential):

• Post-doctoral experience in genomics and bioinformatics
• Excellent programming and scripting skills (in R or in any high-level programming language e.g. C/C++, Perl or Python)
• Expertise in using *NIX systems and compute clusters
• Track record of first author publications in genomics and bioinformatics

Knowledge & Experience – (Desirable):

• Significant post-doctoral experience in cancer genomics and bioinformatics
• Expertise in analysis of publicly available genomics data sets
• Knowledge of / expertise in analysis of epigenomic data
• Experience in bioinformatic method development

We are all too aware that imposter syndrome and the confidence gap can sometimes stop fantastic candidates putting themselves forward, so please do submit an application — we’d love to hear from you