Bioinformatics Specialist

The Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University is seeking a highly skilled Bioinformatician to join our team. As a key member of our research group, you will play a critical role in supporting our investigators in developing and executing analysis plans involving high-dimensional data.

• Perform data preprocessing, including data harmonization and aggregation, quality control checks, transformations, and imputations to prepare data for modeling.
• Build efficient, reproducible, well-annotated pre-processing and analysis pipelines using plain-code and notebook files.
• Create insightful and high-quality visualizations for notebooks and publications.
• Communicate findings to investigators and other project members. Assist in writing publications.
• Prepare study summary reports for investigators and funding agencies.
• Consult with investigators regarding potential analysis techniques and strategies.
• Estimate sample size requirements for research proposals.
• Support grant submissions by assisting with formulating and writing analysis plans.
• Research new analytical methods to determine utility. Maintain knowledge of current trends in multi-omics analysis methods.
• Occasionally present on new techniques to scientists and coworkers.

• Master's degree in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Biostatistics, Data Science, or related field with 3-5 years' experience working directly with metabolomics and other -omics data.
• Experience in study design involving -omics data, such as metabolomics, lipidomics, and metagenomics. Ability to identify appropriate analytical methods and create analytical plans based on research questions.
• Experience building relevant machine learning models such as decision trees, penalized regressions, and support vector machines. Strong skills in multivariate statistical methods, such as PLS, PCA, CCA, and clustering techniques. Ability to identify and check model assumptions, fit quality, and performance.
• Strong programming skills in languages such as R and Python and relevant machine learning, multivariate, and visualization packages.
• Ability to write clean, organized, well-commented, reproducible code. Familiarity with using git for version tracking.
• Strong time management skills and ability to handle multiple projects, organize work, and set priorities to meet deadlines while working within prescribed time constraints.
• Familiarity with data privacy regulations and good data hygiene.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office, including Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
• Strong verbal, written, interpersonal, and team skills.
• Demonstrated proficiency in English language skills (reading, writing, and speaking).
• Confidentiality and discretion are essential.

• PhD in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Biostatistics, Data Science, or related field.
• Experience with multi-omics analysis and integration with other multi-modal data. Willingness to keep abreast of latest trends in omics and multi-omics analyses.
• Extensive experience in exploratory data analysis. Ability to quickly identify latent trends and patterns in large scale data sets. Adept at visualizing complex data.
• Extensive experience in writing scalable, robust, and reusable code. Ability to quickly read and understand other people's code.
• Comfortable with bash scripting and SLURM for executing jobs on computing clusters. Experience working with large data sets and ingesting data from different sources.
• Experience writing SQL select statements for fetching data.
• Ability to behave professionally and ethically at all times.

• This position may occasionally require to work on nights and/or weekends as determined by need.