Salary range £28563 to £35795 pa dependent on experience
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is a world leader in genomic research, with an expanding scientific programme dedicated to understanding gene function in health & disease.
We are sequencing whole genomes from 5000 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and comparing these to genomes from 4000 healthy individuals in an effort to better understand the role of low-frequency and rare genetic variation in IBD risk. The statistical genetics group (led by Dr. Carl Anderson) require a talented postdoctoral fellow with strong computational and statistical skills to contribute to the analysis of this novel dataset.
This project is based on low coverage sequencing, so the complete sequence of an individual is unable to be accurately determined from their sequence data alone. Instead, computationally intensive approaches based around genotype imputation methodology are required to accurately call genotypes at variant sites across the study sample as a whole. Therefore, our ideal candidate will have strong programming skills (e.g. Perl, Python, C++ or Java) and be familiar with computational tools for efficiently handling low-coverage sequencing data (GATK, SAMTOOLS, BEAGLE, etc). The successful candidate should be familiar with current methods for performing low-frequency and rare variant association analyses. There is also scope for the fellow to develop his/her own research ideas and projects using these data.
This project utilizes samples from, and is in collaboration with, the UK IBD Genetics Consortium. The consortium has access to samples from over 10,000 IBD patients with recruitment ongoing, and has a rich array of subphenotype data available for stratified analyses. The UK group forms a major component of the International IBD Genetics Consortium (through which a further 20,000 IBD samples are potentially available for replication), and has been centrally involved in association studies that have identified over 100 loci associated with IBD risk. This project therefore represents a fantastic opportunity for national and international collaboration.
Essential Skills
You will have a first degree in genetics, maths or computing and a PhD in statistics, bioinformatics, statistical genetics, computational biology or a related discipline. You will have a passion for scientific problem solving and be a creative thinker. You will be experienced in applying computational (e.g. Perl, Python, C++ or Java) and statistical (e.g. R) tools to the analysis of large-scale genetic datasets and be familiar with the complex disease genetics literature. You will be self-motivated with a proven ability to work to deadlines as part of a cross-disciplinary research team.
Ideal Skills
The ideal candidate will be familiar with GATK, SAMTOOLS, BEAGLE and IMPUTE2, plus other software necessary for successfully calling accurate genotypes from low-coverage, short-read, next generation sequencing. You will be acquainted with statistical approaches for performing association tests for low-frequency and rare genetic variants and have a strong publication record.
Other information
Postdoctoral Fellows are typically in their first or second postdoctoral position as part of a period of early career research training. Successful applicant(s) who have submitted their PhD thesis and are awaiting their PhD award to be confirmed will be placed on a transitional pay point, currently £26,364. On confirmation applicants will be moved on to the pay range above.
This position is fixed-term for 3 years.
Benefits
The Institute has excellent purpose built facilities on the Genome Campus, Hinxton on the outskirts of Cambridge. We offer a comprehensive range of benefits including a final salary pension scheme and excellent on-site facilities. Further details can be found on our website https://jobs.sanger.ac.uk
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To submit your CV and apply for this job please go to https://jobs.sanger.ac.uk, to register and apply
The closing date for applications is 24 August 2012