Bioinformatics Scientist; Neuro-Focused

Position Objective: The Bioinformatics Scientist will provide support to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The position will independently provide computational and analytical support services to advance the institute’s research objectives. This role will support study design, data processing, advanced modeling, and interpretation of results to generate meaningful insights into neurobehavioral mechanisms.

The position will also contribute to the development of scalable analysis pipelines, reproducible workflows, and innovative computational strategies that enhance the institute’s research capabilities and scientific impact.

• Generate and optimize programs and scripts for the analysis of data; create programs and algorithms and develop computational infrastructure resources for organizing and parsing data from large and complex data.
• Serve as bioinformatics expert and coordinate with teams of biologists to conduct experimental queries and/or perform portions of studies using complex procedures and techniques common to modern bioinformatics.
• Coordinate building bioinformatics infrastructure to ensure easy and meaningful scientific analysis and interpretation of data.
• Provide broad-based programming and analytic support for a wide variety of bioinformatic and research projects.
• Install, troubleshoot and run open-source and commercial scientific software on platforms.
• Conduct analyses of in vivo neurobehavioral data; independently design the analytical approaches as well as identify and solve scientific or technical problems. 1
• Support to the Neurobehavioral Core Laboratory to develop custom pipelines for raw data acquisition, management, pre-processing, post-processing and interpretation. 3
• Provide interpretive analyses of data derived from different experimental platforms to generate biological meaning.
• Write custom programs and algorithms to support data analyses and discovery.
• Perform computational analysis of, and interpret results.
• Provide reports based on analysis of scientific data.
• Analyze large-scale neural and behavioral datasets using machine learning and statistical approaches. 4
• Implement algorithms for data processing and visualization, optimizing them for performance. 5
• Collaborate with scientists to design, analyze, manage and interpret all types of data.
• Work with staff on planning of experiments, and data analysis for internal and collaborative projects; use bioinformatics expertise to advise and help bench scientists on experimental design and trouble-shooting.
• Work with staff to develop specifications for new analysis; design, test and implement solutions.
• Make recommendations to investigators about the correct computational tools for testing scientific hypotheses and reaching valid conclusions.
• Collaborate with the Neurobehavioral Core Laboratory and support scientists to recommend the computational approaches for testing hypotheses, analyze and interpret in vivo neurobehavioral data; prepare and present the results based on the scientific objectives. 2
• Maintain proper and detailed documentation of the analysis performed and report results at lab meetings.
• Attend scientific and programming meetings; take and compile comprehensive notes; organize and edit content of meeting reports.
• Prepare scientific reports and progress reports; assemble data to prepare tables, graphs and slides; conduct scientific and program related information searches and report results.
• Organize daily laboratory notebook on experiments; prepare weekly updates on on-going experiments and tasks; provide monthly progress notes on assigned projects; submit final progress reports and future directions on projects.
• Organize laboratory notebook or computer database to record results of calculations. Share results at lab meetings.
• Devise novel methods of statistical analysis for collected data.
• Utilize and adapt existing bioinformatics techniques to check for trends and patterns in the data.
• Perform data processing and data analysis with existing computational and statistical methods.
• Assist in evaluating and interpreting results…