Head of Bioinformatics - Plant Biology Institute

Head of Bioinformatics - Plant Biology Institute Ellison Institute of Technology
• Oxford, England, GB

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more .org.

The Plant Biology Institute, headed by Professor Steve Kelly, is a key part of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) Oxford. The institute aims to develop impactful and commercially sustainable solutions for improving global food production and planetary health through pioneering plant science research.

The Plant Biology Institute will unite world-class researchers who are focused on expanding the frontiers of plant science. Our research is focussed on enhancing our ability to feed the planet while simultaneously improving the climate and ecosystem outcomes of food production. By embedding cutting-edge plant science research within an organisation that is focused on solving global challenges at scale, we aim to accelerate the timeline from discovery to global impact.

Areas of exploration include:

• Improved plant productivity, both indoors and outside.
• Reduced reliance on inputs including water, fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides.
• Novel decarbonised plant-based production platforms for food and medicines.
• Advanced technologies that speed up discovery and deployment in plants.

Researchers will have access to state-of-the-art laboratory and plant growth facilities and have opportunities to collaborate with experts at the forefront of research on AI, automation, and generative biology across the EIT ecosystem. They will also work with global leaders in market development, commercialisation, and impact creation. The Plant Biology Institute has long-term substantial funding to support the unique scale and ambition of its vision.

At EIT we are seeking an accomplished leader to serve as Head of Bioinformatics for the Plant Biology Institute. This pivotal role will shape a newly established and rapidly scaling Plant Biology Institute that aspires to become a global leader in delivering scientific breakthroughs with real-world impact. aspires to become a global leader in delivering scientific breakthroughs with real-world impact.

The successful candidate will establish and lead PBI's bioinformatics function, delivering analytical capabilities and workflows to support PBI's trait and technology research groups. This role requires close collaboration with research scientists working across a broad range of products including large scale genome and transcriptome sequencing, evolutionary biology, plant and microbial genome and metabolic engineering, plant transformation, plant breeding, computer vision assisted automated phenotyping, machine learning and AI.

The role will require working with other institutional stakeholders to scope, design, equip, and operate a new function within the research institute.

• To lead and manage the informatics and bioinformatics function, delivering robust analytical capabilities to support the interpretation of genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic, phenotypic, computer vision/imaging, and other biological datasets produced by PBI researchers.
• To develop and implement bioinformatics strategies and workflows that support the experimental programmes of PBI.
• To work closely with researchers and group leads to develop and refine computational pipelines for analysing data.
• To recruit, lead, and mentor a…