Explainable AI Postdoc: Gut Microbiome & Addiction

About The Opportunity

The Roux Institute at Northeastern University (NU) and the Jackson Laboratory (JAX) are seeking two ‘co-mentored’ postdoctoral fellows as part of the JAX/Roux Institute joint Applied Data Science Postdoctoral Fellowship program. Under this program, postdoctoral trainees will be co-mentored by NU and JAX researchers working on priorities identified by both organizations. Projects under this program are jointly selected to enhance the JAX/Roux partnership, align with each institution's strategic priorities, and integrate biological and data science.

This cycle’s focus is on

Computational analysis of previously collected data can increase the speed and efficiency of life sciences research. Developing the algorithms, infrastructure, and governance necessary for such analysis can simultaneously enhance hypothesis generation, computational modeling, and

The Roux Institute at Northeastern University (NU) and the Jackson Laboratory (JAX) are seeking two ‘co-mentored’ postdoctoral fellows as part of the JAX/Roux Institute joint Applied Data Science Postdoctoral Fellowship program. Under this program, postdoctoral trainees will be co-mentored by NU and JAX researchers working on priorities identified by both organizations. Projects under this program are jointly selected to enhance the JAX/Roux partnership, align with each institution's strategic priorities, and integrate biological and data science.

This cycle’s focus is on AI-powered data analysis to advance hypothesis-driven research related to addiction. Computational analysis of previously collected data can increase the speed and efficiency of life sciences research. Developing the algorithms, infrastructure, and governance necessary for such analysis can simultaneously enhance hypothesis generation, computational modeling, and post hoc support for laboratory studies and provide the substrate necessary for artificial intelligence (AI) guided experimental design and optimization of scarce/costly resources, such as animal models.

As AI capabilities advance, the computational, infrastructure, and governance challenges associated with computational data analysis will grow rapidly.

The positions will be located at The Roux Institute at Northeastern University, in Portland, Maine, where JAX has co-located its data science team. The position will be supervised by research faculty or research staff and work will be conducted with experimental researchers who are collaborating partners of the Roux Institute and will thus include opportunities for collaboration with other faculty at the Roux Institute and other colleges at Northeastern University.

The postdoc will contribute to and help lead projects that may involve concepts and priorities such as knowledge-graph-driven data integration, AI-powered literature review, agentic database search assistants, multi-omics analysis tools, life sciences foundation models, and “AI scientists.”

Cocaine use disorder (CUD) remains a major public health challenge with no approved pharmacological treatments or predictive biomarkers. Emerging evidence suggests that the gut microbiome plays a significant role in addiction-related behaviors by influencing brain function, immune signaling, and metabolite production. This project seeks to uncover the biological mechanisms linking the gut microbiome, host genetics, and addiction vulnerability.

The postdoctoral fellow will lead the development of cutting-edge, explainable graph neural network (GNN) models that integrate microbiome functional profiles, host genetic variation, and behavioral phenotypes from one of the world's largest mouse systems genetics resources. These models will leverage over a decade of data generated through the Center for Systems Neurogenetics of Addiction (CSNA), together with additional datasets from ongoing NIH-funded studies at The Jackson Laboratory.

A major focus of the project is cross-species translation. Using…