Senior Statistical Bioinformatician – Bioinformatics and BioStatistics

Reports to: Deputy Head of BioStatistics

This is a full-time permanent position on Crick Terms and Conditions of Employment.

Salary ranges from £45,000-£50,000 per annum inclusive, subject to skills & experience

The position of Senior Statistical Bioinformatician within the Bioinformatics Core Facility will provide primarily statistical and mathematical expertise to support high throughput post-genomic technologies, within an informed biological context, not only for research scientists within the Francis Crick Institute but also for other members of the Core group. In addition, this role will provide support and training in statistics and bioinformatics where needed.

This position will be part of an already existing Core team of 14, including two mathematicians, providing bioinformatics, statistical and mathematical expertise to the Crick scientists. Everything the team does is directly driven by questions from Crick scientists, but this role has particular emphasis on ensuring the work we do is statistically sound and mathematically motivated.

PROJECT SUMMARY

In this role you will be asked to provide mathematical, bioinformatics and data analysis support to projects run by Francis Crick scientists. Using a variety of programming, statistical and data analysis techniques you will provide answers to questions that scientists ask mostly about the latest high throughput genomic technologies. Typical analysis steps will cycle through quality assessment, results generation, biological interpretation and ultimately named publication. During this process you will be expected to work closely with other members of the bioinformatics team, the scientific groups with which you are collaborating and the advanced sequencing team. As well as analysis from more established applications there will be the opportunity to develop methods and algorithms to support more bespoke applications requiring the development of new pipelines and software. There will also be mathematical consultation to other members of the group and scientists from the 100 research groups in the Institute. One of the most recent protocols is for Spatial Transcriptomics which we would like to implement at the Crick.

KEY RESPONSIBILITES:

These include but not limited to:

• Provide expert analysis of high-throughput genomic data, using a wide range of mathematical and statistical methods.
• Develop methodologies and techniques to address analysis issues and implement software and data resources in relation to these technologies.
• Evaluate and provide protocols and methods to aid in the analysis of genomic and genetics experiments from academic and commercial sources.
• Provide consultation and communication in data analysis, statistics, mathematical modelling and other areas of bioinformatics, to Crick scientists.
• Collaborate in developing the Core with other members of the Bioinformatics group, Crick scientists and other bioinformatics research groups within the Crick.
• Continue professional development through maintaining awareness of developments in the wider bioinformatics and research communities.
• Participate and contribute to Crick meetings, workshops and seminars.
• Publish where appropriate.

ABOUT US

The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute dedicated to understanding the fundamental biology underlying health and disease. Its work is helping to understand why disease develops and to translate discoveries into new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, infections, and neurodegenerative diseases.

An independent organisation, its founding partners are the Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, UCL (University College London), Imperial College London and King’s College London.

The Crick was formed in 2015, and in 2016 it moved into a brand new state-of-the-art building in central London which brings together 1500 scientists and support staff working collaboratively across disciplines, making it the biggest biomedical research facility under a single roof in Europe.

The Francis Crick Institute will be world-class with a strong national role. Its distinctive vision for excellence includes commitments to collaboration; to developing emerging talent and exporting it the rest of the UK; to public engagement; and to helping turn discoveries into treatments as quickly as possible to improve lives and strengthen the economy.

KEY EXPERIENCE AND COMPETENCIES

The post holder should embody and demonstrate our core Crick values: Bold, Imaginative, Open, Dynamic and Collegial, in addition to the following:

Knowledge

• A good degree in a relevant subject with an extensive mathematical or statistical component e.g. mathematics, statistics, or bioinformatics.
• An understanding of programming, particularly with regard to statistical computation, data visualisation and data analysis techniques.
• A strong background in statistical techniques, preferably with experience of application to biological and genomic data, and the underlying mathematical tools of data science.
• A basic knowledge of molecular biology, genetics, model organisms and possibly cancer biology would be advantageous.
• A basic comprehension of high throughput genomic technologies.
• Considerable experience in bioinformatics or a similarly statistically-challenging data science field.
• Demonstrable experience of programming in a higher level language (R/C/C++/Python/Julia).
• Demonstrable experience of high-dimensional data analysis and statistical modelling.
• Experience of interaction with investigators on scientific projects and working in a collaborative environment.

Experience

Skills and Competencies

• Proven ability in programming.
• Works with minimal supervision, organising and prioritising own workload.
• Excellent communication skills within a research environment, building highly effective working relationships with team and customers.
• Excellent scientific analysis skills.
• A flexible mathematical mindset.
• If you are interested in applying for this role, please apply via emailing your application to stp-bioinformatics-recruitment@crick.ac.uk