Bioinformatician: Research Assistant/Associate in Cambridge UK

£24,049 – £36,298 pa
The Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit (CEU) conducts world-leading interdisciplinary research into the prediction and prevention of cardiovascular disease, with a portfolio of studies that comprises 2.5 million participants.
Professor John Danesh is the Unit’s overall Director and Professor Simon Thompson is the Unit’s Director of Research in Biostatistics.
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a talented bioinformatician who is interested in joining world-leading large-scale studies of cardiovascular disease. This position can be filled by an appropriate candidate at Research Associate or Research Assistant level, depending on relevant qualifications and experience.

The main responsibility of the postholder will be to integrate information from large-scale genetic datasets to allow statistical analyses and help interpret novel findings. Specific examples may include:
- automating stringent genetic quality control pipelines;
- working with publicly available next-generation sequencing data (eg, UK10K, 1000 Genomes);
- creating scripts to mine and integrate data from external sources (eg, gene expression databases, functional databases like ENCODE);
- testing and optimising state-of-the-art calling algorithms (eg, zCall, CHIAMANTE);
- running imputation on large datasets from a range of genetic arrays using reference panels tailored to specific ethnic groups.
Such work will contribute to internationally unique insights into the heritable basis of cardiovascular disease, the world’s leading source of death and major disability, providing opportunities for medicines development and disease prevention. The role will also underpin analyses leading to a series of high-impact publications.
The post-holder will have: (1) relevant qualifications (eg, a postgraduate degree in bioinformatics or similar), (2) a sound understanding of scripting using R and python/C++/Perl/JAVA, in relation to very large datasets (3) demonstrable experience of working with standard bioinformatic tools (4) a strong quantitative background. The post-holder should also be able to work independently, accurately judge priorities, and have excellent organisational and communication skills.
Location of post: Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Strangeways Research Laboratory, Worts Causeway, Cambridge, CB1 8RN
Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available until 31 December 2015 in the first instance.
This appointment is subject to a health assessment. Whether an outcome is satisfactory will be determined by the University.
Further Particulars and details of how to apply are available at: http://www.phpc.cam.ac.uk/jobs
For an informal discussion about the post, please contact Dr Adam Butterworth (asb38@medschl.cam.ac.uk) or call +44 (0) 1223 741302. Please quote reference: RH00944.
Closing date: 18 March 2013.
ALL APPLICATIONS MUST BE RECEIVED BY 5PM ON THE CLOSING DATE.
Interview Date(s): 20/21/22 March 2013.