Associate Computational Biologist

The Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine strives to leverage technology, spark innovation, and drive interdisciplinary evidence-based research to reimagine and redefine cancer treatment, enhance health, and transform lives. Under the visionary leadership of David B. Agus, MD, The Ellison Institute was designed to tackle the difficult questions in health care and research to push the boundaries of medicine forward. To accomplish this, the Institute offers multifaceted programs, including a cancer center, cross-disciplinary research laboratories, a health policy think-tank, and community outreach and educational opportunities. Please visit https://ellison.usc.edu/ to learn more about The Ellison Institute and our brand new, state-of-the-art facility in West Los Angeles.

Contribute to transforming the way we treat cancer as a member of the Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine. Use your skills in data analytics and background in biology to uncover the answers in the chaos of biological big data.

Position responsibilities

We are seeking an Associate Computational Biologist with a strong interest in cancer biology to complement our Quantitative Biology, Bioinformatics and Biostatistics team. In this role, you will develop and implement robust and effective data management and analytical solutions to answer biological questions as part of a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, experimentalists, computer scientists, engineers, statisticians, and biologists. You will collaboratively formulate and execute plans for data analysis, management, and visualization to produce rigorous, reproducible insights while ensuring the quality and integrity of the data throughout its lifecycle. These cancer-related data sets may include high-dimensional multi-omic data, time series from live cell microscopy, and complex clinical data from electronic medical records.

Specific responsibilities:

• Assist analysts and institute researchers in the analysis of data, focusing on data quality assurance, cleaning, aggregation and integration (wrangling), and visualization under supervision.
• Support lab researchers in their collection, processing and analysis of experimental, clinical and other biomedical data to ensure that appropriate metadata are obtained and that the data is properly stored both for investigation and for longer-term preservation
• Test, run, and debug data processing pipelines.
• Coordinate, communicate and collaborate with experimentalists to assist data exchange and federation.
• Modifies and adapts software applications using standard procedures and techniques.

Qualifications

Demonstrable Personal Attributes:

• Ability to thrive in a service-oriented, fast-paced, multi-disciplinary environment.
• Strong organizational skills.
• Attention to detail.
• Interest in technological advances and solutions.
• Strong collaborative spirit.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Ability to input, output, and manipulate data using the R statistical analysis platform, including familiarity with the tidyverse ecosystem and the rmarkdown package. Sample code required.
• Familiarity with data management and analysis practices in biomedical research, including metadata and ontology usages and reproducible research concepts and practices.
• Working knowledge of relational databases. Knowledge of other storage solutions and resources for scientific data (e.g. NoSQL databases, HDF5, …) a plus.
• Familiarity with software development processes and tools a plus. Degree in biology or related fields.
• Experience with Linux shell scripting, command line tools, Git, and simple system administration tasks.
• Facility with Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
• Good writing and verbal communication abilities

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree.
• At least One year of experience in data collection, analysis, visualization, transformation, management, and/or warehousing preferred.

Salary: 86k - 108k

The Ellison Institute, LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer

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