Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Overall Responsibility

The Huttenhower lab at the Broad Institute and the Departments of Biostatistics, Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are seeking postdoctoral fellows to conduct microbiome population studies and molecular multi‑omics. Funded projects with open positions include:

• Computational methods development and consortium data management for the Human Virome Program, to characterize viral communities across the human body in health and disease.
• Integration of host and microbiome multi‑omics for early‑onset colorectal cancer biomarker development and prevention.
• Human–animal microbiome interactions and microbiome biochemical responses to nutrition using canine and feline companion animal models, in collaboration with Hill’s Pet Nutrition.
• Characterizing the oral microbiome in chronic cardiometabolic disease, using a subset of the 20,000 individuals enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study II Micro‑N (Microbiome among Nurses) study.

The incumbent will work with postdocs, research staff, students, collaborators and software development teams, in an interdisciplinary setting combining microbial ecology, bioinformatics, biostatistics, molecular microbiology, computer science, and software development.

• Develop and apply analytical methods for microbiome data, including computational approaches for metagenomic and metatranscriptomic profiling and multi‑omic integration.
• Operate computational environments for ‘omics data manipulation (command line, Python, R, etc.).
• Apply deep knowledge in a relevant sub‑discipline (bioinformatics, microbiology, microbial ecology, biostatistics, epidemiology, nutrition, immunology, etc.).
• Present results to collaborators, local, national and international scientific audiences with diverse backgrounds.
• Participate in optional mentoring and teaching of Ph.D. students, junior scientists, and public lectures or short course workshops.
• Maintain regular interaction with internal and external contacts, including Harvard scientists, collaborators, students, postdocs and external clinicians and industry leaders.
• Collaborate with teams of students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty within the Huttenhower lab and the broader Harvard Chan Microbiome in Public Health Center on microbiome bioactive discovery and translation.

• Ph.D. in Computational Biology, Molecular Biology, Computer Science, Biostatistics or related fields, with experience in microbiome, microbiological or molecular ‘omics preferred.
• Familiarity with methods for high‑throughput sequence analysis, ideally microbial community metagenomics and/or microbial genetics.
• Excellent record of scientific contributions, publications and presentations; primary or key author on one or more major papers or presentations.
• Ability to handle a variety of tasks, solve problems with numerous and complex variables, and shift priorities rapidly.
• Demonstrated success in working on complex, novel research problems in a collegial environment.
• Creativity, curiosity and a desire, persistence and ability to create scientific advances in human microbiome science.

Salary: $75,000 per year.

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