Associate Director, Computational Biology

Job Description

Janssen Research & Development is currently hiring for an Associate Director, Computational Biology within our World Without Disease Accelerator and the Lung Cancer Initiative (WWDA/LCI) organization. This position is based in Cambridge, MA but will give consideration to Springhouse, PA or Raritan, NJ.

With the convergence of genomic sequencing, electronic medical records (EMR), digital health and cloud computing, we can finally measure the genetic, clinical and environmental contributors to disease. We have more data than ever before, however very few organizations have the ability capture these data within a single patient population. Even fewer organizations have the interdisciplinary expertise required to extract the valuable insights across these integrated datasets.

Johnson & Johnson is one of the few global healthcare organizations with a history of leadership in medical device, pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare sectors. Here at World Without Disease Accelerator and the Lung Cancer Initiative (WWDA/LCI) within Johnson & Johnson, we believe that the convergence of the capabilities above will eventually allow providers to detect and intercept disease before the earliest clinical symptoms manifest. We are looking for data scientists who share this view and are passionate about applying state of the techniques to analyze diverse -omics, EMR, device, and clinical data.

The Associate Director will work alongside his/her scientific peers to design data analysis strategies, interpret results and drive decision-making in the pursuit of prevention, interception, and the cure of disease. He/she will have experience working in interdisciplinary teams and gaining support for the use complex analytics to answer biological questions. As a member of the global Data Sciences and Predictive Biomarkers team, he will join a collaborative, international team of scientists and proactively contribute your experience and expertise to achieving the WWDA/LCI vision. Candidates should possess outstanding interpersonal skills as well as broad biological interests that will enable them to facilitate interactions between laboratory-based scientists and data scientists. He/she will effectively communicate data and results to our partners within and outside of J&J. He/she will also take ownership for personnel management, including but not limited to performance appraisals and talent development plans.

Key Responsibilities

Collaborate closely with your scientific peers within the WWDA/LCI disease areas to identify the datasets and analyses necessary to formulate and test scientific hypotheses, discover disease/pathway associations, identify novel targets and/or identify biomarkers

Design and develop novel computational pipelines for the analysis and integration of -omic data from clinical studies

Maintain expert knowledge of computational biology tools. Review, test and benchmark these tools towards implementation and improvement of WWDA/LCI programs.

Keep abreast of scientific literature, emerging approaches and innovations in computational biology.

Collaborate with an interdisciplinary WWDA/LCI team and across Janssen therapeutic areas

Represent the Data Sciences team in both WWDA/LCI meetings and meetings with external collaborators

Qualifications

Required

PhD in Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Computational Biology, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics, Machine Learning or similar field

A solid understanding of statistics and data mining of biological data types

At least 5 years of experience working with large scale genomic data types (e. g. next generation sequencing, metagenomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, etc)

Expertise in Python and/or R

Experience working in a Linux environment

Experience working in an Amazon cloud environment

Outstanding programming and problem-solving skills

Self-driven and work well in an interdisciplinary team with minimal direction

A strong desire to understand why things work the way they do

Thrive in a fast-paced environment and able to prioritize amongst multiple projects

Experience with communicating and presenting complex concepts to diverse audiences

Must be organizationally adaptable, innovative and thrive in high complexity environments to deliver high quality work product in the face of multiple demands

Preferred

Experience analyzing data in Lung cancer a plus

Experience analyzing diverse patient cohorts containing clinical, -omics and imaging data

Expertise in methods pertinent for functional interpretation of -omics data, e. g. pathway enrichment, functional module detection, causal reasoning

Experience with both relational and no-sql databases

Experience with machine learning/deep learning techniques

Experience in supervision a plus

Johnson & Johnson is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.

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