Postdoctoral Research Associate

UVA Health • Charlottesville, VA

4d • Onsite

About The Position

We are looking for a highly motivated Postdoctoral Research Associate to join the Platig Lab at the University of Virginia. The candidate would be part of an interdisciplinary team of computational biologists, data scientists, and RNA biologists investigating the role of alternative splicing in Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). The project will leverage large-scale generation (400+ samples) of long-read RNA-seq from CD4+ T cells in a T1D cohort across multiple time points. A core aim of this project will be to develop interpretable machine learning approaches to understand how RNA binding proteins (RBPs) regulate observed splicing changes and to test putative mechanisms experimentally. This is a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of machine learning, RNA biology, and immunology, with translational relevance to T1D. Postdoctoral employment is temporary and is normally limited to an individual who has been awarded a Ph.D. or equivalent doctorate within the previous five years and who will be involved in full-time research or scholarship at the University. Employment as a Postdoctoral Research Associate is viewed as training and is preparatory for a full-time academic or research career, is supervised by a senior scholar, and allows the appointee to publish the results of his/her research or scholarship during the training period. This is a 12-month appointment with the possibility of renewal contingent upon satisfactory performance and the availability of funding.

Requirements

• PhD (awarded or imminent) in bioinformatics, computational biology, or a closely related field
• Demonstrated experience using long- or short-read RNA-seq to understand alternative splicing
• Experience using machine learning techniques in genomics
• Strong publication record
• Ability to communicate computational techniques to a broad audience

Nice To Haves

• Experience modeling RNA binding proteins
• Familiarity with T1D
• Experience with machine learning interpretability approaches (xAI)

Responsibilities

• Integrate long-read and short-read RNA-seq with RBP data (motifs, eCLIP) for splicing and isoform analysis
• Develop machine learning methods to predict functional RNA regulatory elements
• Collaborate with wet-lab partners to design follow-up experiments
• Publish findings and present at national conferences
• Contribute to grant writing and mentorship of graduate students

Benefits

• Exempt-level, benefitted position
• Information on benefits available to postdoctoral associates at UVA can be found at postdoc.virginia.edu and hr.virginia.edu/benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree