Bio Informatician

Maastricht UMC+

Maastricht

Description

Job Description

Genetics of cardiomyopathies is one of the main focuses of the department of clinical genetics and the Maastricht UMC+. Therefore, cutting-edge new genomic techniques are used to dissect the genetic background of cardiomyopathies at our department to change the lives of patients and their families.

We are recruiting a research bioinformatician to support our multidisciplinary research team of cardiogenetics. We collaborate closely within the Netherlands with other UMCs, but also with international leading institutions such as Imperial College London and the CNIC institute in Madrid. Our group combines in-depth clinical information in a large cohort of patients with the genetic data to improve risk prediction and discover new genetic etiologies. In the past years, we collected large amounts of genetic data that are ready to harvest in a research setting. For this, we are looking for a motivated bioinformatician who is looking for an inspiring research environment.

Responsibilities

As a bioinformatician in our team you will be responsible for retrieving and maintaining all whole exome and genome sequencing data of our study population, and to develop a way to retrieve the genetic data in a systematic manner. It is stimulated to work on own projects, together with other members of our group across disciplines.

  • Establishing a research repository for genetics data coming from the diagnostics
  • Initiative in developing research projects to explore the available genetics data to contribute to the goals of the research group
  • Computational works and code documentation with clinical-grade reproducibility standards
  • Help with supervision of (PhD) students within the lab
  • Willingness to write and contribute to (consortium) grant applications and research manuscripts

Your working environment

The department of Clinical Genetics is focused on the diagnosis of and counselling about hereditary and congenital disorders as well as science and innovative technologies in genetic care. Cardiogenetics is one of the two main focuses of the department and is nationally in a leading position. As part of the research group, you will also directly work with the diagnostic laboratory that provides specialized clinical genetic diagnostics in close collaboration with the Department of Genetics of Radboudumc in Nijmegen, within the Academic Alliance, through the use of innovative and data-intensive genetic technologies. There will be also a close collaboration with the department of cardiology.

For more information, please visit our website: www.klinischegenetica.mumc.nl

Job Requirements

We are looking for candidates who satisfy most of the following:

  • Masters degree in bioinformatics or a PhD in genomics, computational biology, Artificial Intelligence, or related field (completed or nearly complete);
  • Demonstrable skills in bioinformatics;
  • Experience in short- and/or long-read genome sequencing data processing and analysis;
  • Experience with HPC systems, Linux environments, familiar with queuing systems like SLURM or SGE, and workflow management techniques like snakemake or nextflow;
  • Strong analytical mindset with the ability to translate biological research questions into structured, reproducible, and correct data analyses, and the skill to explain these to your fellow team members;
  • Ability to work both independently and collaboratively in interdisciplinary teams;
  • Excellent communication skills in English (Dutch is an advantage); ability to present work clearly, visualize information in understandable graphs and write manuscripts;
  • Stress resilience and the ability to chase competitive deadlines.

Desirables

  • Experience with integration of (long-read) genome sequencing and RNA sequencing data is a strong plus.
  • Experience with rare burden analyses of variants obtained from genomic analyses is an advantage.
  • Experience in genomics/transcriptomics research, as evidenced by peer-reviewed publications.
  • Experience with scripting and programming languages such as Bash, Python, and R. Familiarity with Java is a plus.

Salary

Depending on your education and experience, the salary ranges from a minimum of € 3.724.- to a maximum of € 5.867,- gross per month for a full-time position. This salary is excluding vacation allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3% of your gross annual salary.

Contract

The position is for 1 year. A possible extension is depending on (research) funding.

Our offer

  • A young and multiciliary environment.
  • An inspiring academic environment at Maastricht UMC+ and Maastricht University.
  • Opportunities to contribute to high-impact translational research at the interface of genetics, AI, and medicine.
  • Professional development, training opportunities, and exposure to international collaborations.
  • Competitive salary and employment conditions according to Cao umc standards.
  • Opportunity to travel to other institutes across Europe within the awarded EU grants.

Questions?

For more information about the position or the training and career development opportunities, you can contact Job Verdonschot at

[email protected]. Would you like to shadow us for a day? That’s also possible!

For information about the application procedure, follow this link. General information about employment conditions and working at Maastricht UMC+ can be found here (Dutch only).

Can’t find the answer to your question? Then please contact the Recruitment team.

Applications for this position can be submitted until 22 June.

We recruit our candidates directly and do not work with external agencies for this vacancy.