Research Assistant Scientist

University of Florida • Gainesville, FL

3d • Onsite

About The Position

The University of Florida Diabetes Institute (UFDI) invites applications for a full-time, non-tenure-track Assistant Scientist to join an interdisciplinary research environment focused on advancing the prevention, prediction, and treatment of diabetes through artificial intelligence, computational biology, and precision medicine. The successful candidate will contribute to the development and application of innovative AI and machine learning approaches that accelerate discovery across basic, translational, and clinical diabetes research.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Biomedical Informatics, Data Science, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Bioinformatics, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a closely related STEM field.
• Demonstrated experience developing AI and machine learning models for biomedical applications.
• Strong programming experience in Python and/or R.
• Experience with Git/GitHub and collaborative software development.
• Experience working in Linux and high-performance computing environments.
• Evidence of scholarly productivity through peer-reviewed publications.

Nice To Haves

• Experience applying AI or machine learning to diabetes, metabolic disease, immunology, or other complex biomedical diseases.
• Experience with digital pathology, computational pathology, whole slide image analysis, or quantitative microscopy.
• Experience integrating multi-modal datasets, including genomics, transcriptomics, spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, imaging, and EHR data.
• Experience with modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras, Scikit-learn, Pandas, NumPy, and SciPy.
• Familiarity with convolutional neural networks (CNNs), graph neural networks (GNNs), transformer architectures, foundation models, and large language models (LLMs).
• Experience developing reproducible biomedical software and AI workflows.
• Demonstrated success contributing to grant proposals or securing research funding.
• Experience mentoring students and junior investigators.

Responsibilities

• Develop novel AI, machine learning, and deep learning methods to address complex biomedical questions in diabetes.
• Design and implement computational tools for integrating imaging, genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic, and clinical datasets.
• Develop scalable software applications and maintain research code using modern software engineering practices.
• Apply AI methods to whole slide images, microscopy datasets, spatial transcriptomics, and EHR-derived clinical data.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams of clinicians, computational scientists, engineers, statisticians, and laboratory investigators.
• Lead and participate in collaborative research projects spanning basic science, translational research, and clinical applications.
• Prepare scientific manuscripts, conference presentations, and competitive grant applications.
• Mentor graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research staff, and trainees.

What This Job Offers

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