Senior Computational Research Scientist
About The Position
The Abraham Lab at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital seeks a Senior Computational Research Scientist to study gene dysregulation and genome organization in pediatric cancers. The role analyzes data from second- and third-generation sequencing applications that investigate gene regulatory biology in health and disease, and contributes to collaborative development of software approaches and analytical pipelines for high-throughput genomic data. The lab studies gene-expression regulation, including enhancers, super-enhancers, and core transcriptional regulatory circuits. Its research uses genome-wide and single-cell omics data, including CUT&RUN, RNA-seq, and Hi-ChIP, to investigate how regulatory elements establish gene-expression programs in healthy cells and how their alteration or mistargeting contributes to disease. The successful candidate will join a multidisciplinary, inter-institutional team comparing gene-expression regulation in normal and pediatric cancer cells and will lead laboratory research projects with increasing independence. The Department of Computational Biology provides high-performance computing clusters, cloud computing, visualization tools, automated analytical pipelines, and faculty mentorship in data analysis and management. The position supports collaborative research and scientific publication, including opportunities to produce first-author, high-profile publications. This is a full-time, weekday day-shift position in Memphis, Tennessee, with 40 scheduled hours per week.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in bioinformatics, molecular biology, biochemistry, computer science, or a related field.
- At least 7 years of relevant experience with a bachelor’s degree; alternatively, at least 5 years with a master’s degree or at least 2 years with a PhD.
- Prior experience in computational research techniques and processes.
- Proven performance in an earlier or comparable role.
- Track record of scientific productivity, such as a first-author paper or demonstrable contribution to a large project.
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills for collaborative research within and beyond the laboratory.
- Applicants from primarily wet-lab or clinical backgrounds should demonstrate significant coding experience if seeking to further develop quantitative skills.
- Experience managing large numbers of datasets.
- Experience building, tailoring, and deploying analysis pipelines using genomic analysis toolkits such as bedtools, samtools, or HiCPro.
Nice To Haves
- Master’s degree or PhD; a PhD in a quantitative and biologically oriented field is especially encouraged.
- Experience with chromatin and gene-expression analysis technologies.
- Experience with applied high-throughput sequencing analysis, including alignment, coverage quantification, differential coverage statistics, and multi-omic integration.
- Understanding of gene-expression mechanisms, including transcription factors, enhancers, genome structure, and transcriptional condensates.
- Experience creating succinct, clear figures using R.
- One to two first-author papers with impact factor greater than 10, or an equivalent contribution to other research outputs.
Responsibilities
- Lead computationally focused scientific research projects with increasing independence over time.
- Collaborate on project and analysis design under the guidance of multiple invested principal investigators.
- Set task-level priorities across multiple interconnected projects.
- Develop computational methods, especially those related to regulatory circuitry controlling pediatric cancers.
- Apply and integrate field-standard omics pipelines for technologies such as ChIP-seq, CUT&RUN, CUT&TAG, ATAC-seq, HiChIP/Hi-C, and bulk or single-cell RNA-seq.
- Adhere to field and laboratory standards for data analysis.
- Identify, process, organize, interpret, review, and report relevant data.
- Direct data collection.
- Present research to colleagues within and outside the institution.
- Draft complex manuscripts with minimal supervision, as required.
- Maintain regular and predictable attendance, especially in-person attendance at meetings and relevant presentations.
- Perform other duties as assigned to meet department and institutional goals and objectives.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
