Postdoctoral Computational Biologist @ Melanoma Institute Australia

Employer:  Melanoma Institute Australia

Closing date: 26 April 2024

Brief position description: Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) is a world-leading melanoma research non-profit organisation. Led by current joint Australians of the Year Professor Georgina Long AO and Professor Richard Scolyer AO, our mission is to reach zero deaths from melanoma this decade. The Melanoma Translational Research Group is a diverse team of researchers, located at the University of Sydney, that works alongside our MIA clinical oncology, surgical, pathology and biostatistics teams to investigate the biology of melanoma development, risk stratification and response to systemic therapies. The group is highly successful with major resources in human clinical tissue samples, including molecular and imaging data, spanning whole genome and increasing single cell sequencing datasets, transcriptomics, multiplex immunohistochemistry, and spatial biology.
MIA is seeking a driven postdoctoral computational biologist that will leverage the vast resources available for the discovery and validation of tools that improve diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of melanoma patients. Through impactful translational research, the role will work alongside computational biologists, pathologists and clinicians to interrogate multi-omics datasets, imaging data and other resources available at MIA. 
Responsibilities: 
- To lead and contribute to a portfolio of projects with a focus on discovery and validation of diagnostic and prognostic tools.
- Use deep learning to analyze histopathological images of melanoma and related tumours.
- Conduct analyses and experimentation to answer scientific hypotheses.
- Refine data analysis pipeline in the multi-omics and imaging space for reproducible experimentation for various projects in the laboratory.
- Publish research in high impact journals and present at international conferences.
- Mentor and supervise students to develop bioinformatics talent with a focus on clinical significance.
- Attend clinical and collaborative research meetings to co-develop clinical questions and the possible implications of research findings.
- Comply with the Institute’s policy for handling information.

Key Selection Criteria 
To be successful in this role you will have:
Essential:
- A PhD in a relevant discipline such as Computational Biology, Machine learning or a closely related field. 
- A passion to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms that drive melanoma and other cancers.
- Experience processing and analysing multi-omics and/or imaging datasets. 
- Ability to use methods to easily convey complex data into visuals, such as multi-omics and image analyses (e.g. heatmaps/graphs) 
- Demonstrated skills in UNIX/Linux environments.
- Proven ability to execute jobs in high performance computing clusters environments e.g. via torque/slurm workload manager.
- Experienced in at least one programming language (preferably python). 
- Proven ability to work across diverse groups of staff within multidisciplinary teams.
- Excellent communication skills, both written and oral. 

Preferred:

- Experience in melanoma research, cancer research and biomarker development.
- Experience with analysis from omics data generated from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded derived tissue samples.
- Experience with mIHC imaging and analysis techniques, e.g. HALO®, Phenocycler-Fusion®, QuPath
- Experience with machine learning techniques applied to image analysis.

Please apply by submitting your cover letter and resume to careers@melanoma.org.au
Addressing the selection criteria is mandatory and your application will not be considered if not answered.

Only applicants with full working rights within Australia should apply. Only successful applicants will be contacted. Please no recruitment agencies. This is a full-time role. We will consider applicants who apply by 26/04/2024.

We pay our respects to the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which Melanoma Institute Australia works, and their Elders both past and present, and acknowledge the deep, continuing connection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to the land, waters, and sky.

Job website:   https://melanoma.org.au/

Contact name: Kylie Scott

Contact email: kylie.scott@melanoma.org.au