One of the world leaders in genomics and next-generation sequencing is ramping up. The Genome Institute at Washington University has had a busy year already. In January, TGI and its collaborators published three Nature papers that came online the same day: one on the genetic basis of an aggressive pediatric leukemia, another on genomic and epigenetic analyses of childhood retinoblastoma, and a third on tumor evolution in relapsed AML. In February, the funding period began for “A Turnkey System for High-Throughput Variant Discovery and Interpretation”, a U01 grant under which TGI will improve and share its genome analysis tools with the research community. And now, there are job openings in four different groups at the Genome Institute.
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Informatics Grant
Staff Scientist in Human Genetics
Postdoc Research Associate in Medical Genomics
Postdoc Research Associate in Parasite Genomics
Programmer/Analyst in Analysis Pipeline Group
Next-Gen Sequencing Informatics Grant
TGI won a four-year, $805,000 grant to develop its analysis pipelines into A Turnkey system for High-Throughput Variant Discovery and Interpretation (NIH project link), one of several informatics grants reported by GenomeWeb’s BioInform last month. TGI has spent years developing a computational framework and innovative tools for NGS analysis, with a particular emphasis on variant discovery and annotation. The goal of the project is to make these tools available to the wider community, both individually and as part of a complete informatics solution from alignment to detection to interpretation. This “turnkey system” will be flexible and powerful enough to be adopted by experienced laboratories, and user-friendly enough to give push-button analysis capabilities to groups with little bioinformatics expertise.
Bottom line, anyone will be able to run “Washington University Genome Institute” analysis on their sequencing datasets with little bioinformatics expertise.
Staff Scientist in Human Genetics
TGI’s Human Genetics Group is looking for a statistical geneticist or biostatistician to work with a dedicated team of researchers investigating inherited human diseases. As you might expect for a major genome center, there are many projects from small family-based studies to large trio studies to massive studies of complex disease involving thousands of unrelated samples. We are looking for someone to help evaluate, design, and execute statistical analysis plans for sequencing projects.
For more details, see Job Posting 23423.
Postdoc Research Associate in Medical Genomics
The Medical Genomics Group is looking for a postdoc research associate in the area of cancer genomics. There are many such projects here, ranging from studies of a single tumor to large-scale studies involving thousands of samples. The ultimate goal is to translate discoveries enabled by next-gen sequencing into medically actionable information. As such, an individual who can assist in the development, implementation, and application of algorithms to characterize and interpret sequence variation in the context of cancer is needed.
For more information, see Job Posting 23424.
Postdoc Research Associate in Parasite Genomics
There is also a postdoc research associate position open in parasite genomics, as part of an established and successful research group focused on integrating ‘omics’ approaches aimed at understanding organisms at a molecular level. This group is working on comparative analysis of parasitic helminthes to identify conserved and/or taxonomically restricted proteins that may prove useful as antiparasitic drugs. The responsibilities will include design, development, testing, and implementation of software applications for comparative analyses.
For more information, see Job Posting 23361.
Programmer/Analyst in Analysis Pipeline Group
The analysis pipeline group has a position open for a software engineer in data management & compression. The job will entail working on a team of 20 software engineers on next-gen sequence analysis pipelines, focusing on utilizing the information management capabilities of the analysis system to migrate data appropriately between different tiers of storage and eliminate data duplication. Responsibilities will include development, integration, and support of software tools/pipelines/databases in collaboration with data analysts.
For details, see Job Posting 23269.