Bioinformatics Staff Scientist at NSF-NCEMS

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Approval of remote and hybrid work is not guaranteed regardless of work location. For additional information on remote work at Penn State, see Notice to Out of State Applicants.

This position is funded for 3 year(s); continuation past 3 year(s) will be based on university need, performance, and/or availability of funding.

The U.S. National Science Foundation National Synthesis Center for Emergence in the Molecular and Cellular Sciences (NCEMS) and the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) at Penn State seeks an outstanding scientist to fill a Bioinformatics Staff Scientist (Research Data Scientist - Intermediate Professional or Advanced Professional level) position dedicated to advancing the collaborative research of the Center's Working Groups.

NCEMS is an interdisciplinary research Center positioned at the interface of data science with molecular and cellular biology. The Center provides leadership in the integration of diverse, publicly available datasets, enabling cross-disciplinary teams of scientists to synthesize knowledge and pursue fundamental questions at the forefront of the life sciences.

Bioinformatics Staff Scientists play a supporting role in enabling the research efforts of multidisciplinary scientific teams supported by NCEMS, typically contributing to 2-3 projects simultaneously.

This position has the potential to be a hybrid of remote and on-site work, with a minimum requirement of 3 days per week on-site at the Penn State University Park campus. This position does not permit fully remote work.

• Collaborate with NCEMS Working Groups to design and implement computational methods for integrating, analyzing, and visualizing complex molecular and cellular biology data.

• Lead data wrangling, harmonization, standardization, and quality control of existing biological datasets, with emphasis on next-generation sequencing data.

• Develop and apply end-to-end data processing workflows from raw data across modern experimental modalities (including, for example, RNA‑seq, scRNA‑seq, ChIP‑seq, DNA‑seq, ATAC‑seq, and Hi‑C).

• Advise on the selection, development, and application of bioinformatics tools and pipelines (e.g., alignment, expression analysis, variant calling) using open and reproducible science best practices.

• Support the publication of intermediate data products, code, and documentation.

• Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in bioinformatics, computational biology, and available biological datasets.

• M.S. or PhD in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Statistics, Data Science, or a related field is preferred.

• Strong proficiency in Python and/or R for data analysis, scripting, and statistical modeling.

• Demonstrated experience processing raw next-generation sequencing data and developing end‑to‑end, reproducible analysis workflows.

• Experience working with complex molecular and cellular datasets, such as genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, proteomic, metabolomic/lipidomic, and single-cell or multi‑omics data.

• Solid understanding of genetic principles, molecular biology techniques, and genomic databases.

• Experience developing new bioinformatics tools as dictated by research needs.

• Publications in peer‑reviewed journals demonstrating contributions to the field.

• Experience supporting/contributing to multi‑PI projects.

Candidates must also demonstrate a commitment to ethical conduct and research integrity, strong work ethic, strong interpersonal and written communication skills, and…