Bioinformatics Team Leader
August 25, 2021

A talented bioinformaticist and team leader is sought to join the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Bioinformatics Center (MBC) of the Ocular Genomics Institute (OGI) at Mass Eye and Ear (MEE) and Harvard Medical School.  The mission of the OGI is to improve our understanding of the genetic causes of inherited eye diseases, and develop genetically informed therapies to prevent vision loss from these disorders.  MEE is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, and is an international leader for treatment and research in both Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology. The MBC conducts genetic and genomic research while also providing bioinformatics expertise to other clinical and research programs at MEE. The Center is seeking a highly motivated and experienced bioinformaticist to help with addressing the associated computing and analysis needs.  The bioinformatics team leader will apply bioinformatics principles and methods to assist scientists in analyzing, filtering, and processing next-generation sequencing (NGS), genotyping array, and other omics data.  This is a multifaceted position with responsibilities in software development and support, database development and administration, genomic research, and team management.  The team leader will serve as the liaison between the OGI faculty and the bioinformatics programmers in the MBC, providing computational support, assisting in prioritization of work, and serving to facilitate completion of projects in a timely manner. The ideal candidate should have strong computational and programming skills and experience with large-scale data analysis, such as NGS, and be excited to contribute to advancing the science and medicine of eye disease.

Specific responsibilities:

  • Lead the team of bioinformaticists in the MEEI Bioinformatics Center.  This includes helping establish work priorities and delegating projects to other team members.
  • Development and maintenance of bioinformatics pipelines, including those on the OGI High Performance Compute cluster and cloud-based systems such as Terra.
  • Develop custom bioinformatic tools to analyze data from genomics experiments, and perform bioinformatics analyses.
  • Design and facilitate the maintenance of databases used to process and analyze genomic and RNA-seq data.
  • Oversee the OGI cluster management in collaboration with the Mass General Brigham data center team.  Install, maintain and update required bioinformatic software and databases.
  • Work closely with other computational and experimental scientists to design experiments
  • Help maintain collaborations with other research groups, such as the Data Science Platform at the Broad Institute.
  • Provide IT-related and bioinformatic help, training and advice to lab researchers as needed.

Minimum Education and Experience:

  • Master’s or PhD Degree in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Computer Science, or a related quantitative discipline, and 3+ years of related work experience required.
  • Strong programming skills and in-depth experience with several programming languages, such as Python, R, Perl, or C++.
  • Experience with Unix/Linux environments, including shell scripting and High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster usage.
  • Experience in applying rigorous statistical methods to large-scale biological data, such as next-generation sequencing data.
  • Demonstrate critical thinking, rigorous work, and ability to meet deadlines.
  • Strong personal skills, and excellent organization and verbal and written communication skills.

Desired Experience:

  • Background in computational genomics, statistical genetics, or machine learning.
  • Analyses involving large, publicly-available genomic datasets (e.g. GTEx, gnomAD).
  • Experience using cloud-based computing resources.
  • Experience with Linux server administration.
  • Experience with SQL and NoSQL Databases and web programming/HTML

Work Environment:

The lab is located in the main hospital building of Mass Eye and Ear at 243 Charles Street, in a standard research and office work space that is part of MEE’s Ocular Genomics Institute. The bioinformaticist will work amongst other computational biologists and computer scientists in the Bioinformatics Center of the OGI, and will be part of a larger multidisciplinary research cummunity, which includes geneticists, clinical scientists, and experimental biologists.

Interested candidates should send their CV, a cover letter, and contact information for 3 references to:

Dr. Eric A Pierce and Dr. Ayellet Segre

Ocular Genomics Institute

Mass Eye and Ear

243 Charles St

Boston, MA  02114

Eric_Pierce@meei.harvard.edu

Ayellet_Segre@meei.harvard.edu