Research Fellow – Bioinformatics and Data Sciences

This is an exciting new opportunity for an enthusiastic and motivated postdoctoral fellow in health data-sciences and biomedical informatics to join the Veterinary Health Innovation Engine (vHive) and the University of Surrey's Health and Biomedical Informatics Group.

The overall objective for the postholder is to work within these multidisciplinary teams to apply and repurpose techniques in informatics, data sciences, machine learning and AI, to develop new insights and approaches to improve animal health and welfare. This will include assuming responsibilities for informatics- and computational-led data analysis to identify new opportunities via market analysis, drug repurposing/discovery, formal knowledge representation, and precision medicine-led biomarker discovery to complement new therapeutic veterinary medicine approaches.

This work is contextualised into a programme award from sponsors Zoetis (the largest animal health corporation globally) that seeks to support their interests in key disease issues. The post will involve collaborative working with industry partners, charities, as well as other universities and research institutes across the UK and internationally. The job holder will develop, repurpose and use new research techniques and methods, in consultation with the research supervisor and with input from Zoetis employees.

Studies will include assessing interview and stakeholder data for unmet need definition, in-silico drug repurposing and trial research, critical evaluation and interpretation of biomarker discovery datasets (and in particular proteomics and transcriptomics), plus extensive library research.

The overall programme of research will be jointly developed by Prof. Nophar Geifman and the person appointed. There are opportunities to broaden out into other areas such as new algorithm development, and advanced computational methodologies for integrated analyses.

About you:

You will have a key role in planning, designing and executing a range of analyses on varied novel projects aimed at high-impact and theoretically valuable research questions. Strong quantitative research skills with hands-on real-world experience are essential. You must have experience in the application of informatics pipelines to health and biomedical data (outside educational settings). You will need good communication skills, and be able to work with and disseminate information to both academic and non-academic audiences.

You will have a PhD in health, medical or bio-informatics, epidemiology, data sciences, or a related subject, ideally with a focus on utilising large-scale health/biomedical data and the application of advanced data analysis methods such as machine-learning. Equivalent research or industry experience will also be considered.

Excellent statistical and analytical skills are necessary, as are programming skills, ideally with the ability to work in R and experience with bioinformatic tools/software. Coding in other languages such as Python is an advantage.