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Seeking Breakthrough Makers

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) offers countless ways to change lives. Our diverse community of more than 20,000 Breakthrough Makers will inspire you to pursue passions, develop expertise, and drive innovation.

At CHOP, your experience is valued; your voice is heard; and your contributions make a difference for patients and families. Join us as we build on our promise to advance pediatric care-and your career.

CHOP's Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

CHOP is committed to building an inclusive culture where employees feel a sense of belonging, connection, and community within their workplace. We are a team dedicated to fostering an environment that allows for all to be their authentic selves. We are focused on attracting, cultivating, and retaining diverse talent who can help us deliver on our mission to be a world leader in the advancement of healthcare for children.

We strongly encourage all candidates of diverse backgrounds and lived experiences to apply.


A Brief Overview

The bioinformatics group in the Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics (DBHI) at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is seeking a Bioinformatics Scientist to join our team of Bioinformatics Scientists supporting ongoing basic and translational research within the Division of Oncology and Center for Childhood Cancer Research (CCCR). The candidate will be embedded in the CCCR, a highly collaborative environment, and will primarily be focused on supporting scientific teams and projects as a bioinformatics domain expert. The candidate will attend selected lab meetings and interact daily with principal investigators and individual lab members on a project-by-project basis. Additionally, the candidate will work with a principal investigator overseeing the bioinformatics group in the CCCR and our extended bioinformatics group in DBHI to stay current on emerging technologies and algorithms.

The successful candidate will preferably have a PhD degree in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, or a related field, and must have demonstrable skills in coding in R and/or Python, though both are preferred. The successful candidate will have had biology training, experience with high-performance and/or cloud-based computing environments, experience in the analysis of sequencing data related to cancer (e.g. somatic single nucleotide variants (SNVs), indels, structural variations (SVs), fusion transcripts, copy number analyses, or ATAC sequencing), as well as experience in other types of bioinformatics analyses, particularly those involving next-generation sequencing. The successful candidate will have experience with established algorithms/pipelines for processing genomics data, and the ability to learn and apply new methods. They will also be able to conceive and develop innovative solutions for a variety of computational challenges of these data. Creative data visualization skills are important for this position.

The Bioinformatics Scientist II position is a position for a PhD level professional and a 2nd stage position for those with moderate experience without a PhD. The focus of the position is service-level application of bioinformatics tools and methods to bench and clinical research problems in various biomedical domains. The position allows for a wide variety of activities described within the job responsibilities and encompasses positions within both research and clinical environments. Activities occur with a moderate degree of supervision with some latitude for independent judgment, development of bioinformatics workflows and processes, and presentation of results. The Bioinformatics Scientist II will begin to apply best practices in collaborative science as a bioinformatics domain expert. Academic output, while not a primary focus of this position, is also expected with a moderate degree of supervision. The Bioinformatics Scientist II is primarily focused on supporting scientific teams and projects as a bioinformatics domain expert.

The Bioinformatics Scientist II must be able to perform all responsibilities listed in the Bioinformatics Scientist I job description. All responsibilities listed in this description are additional.

What you will do

• Pre-Analysis (20%): Contribute to the development of application portfolio by developing knowledge of internally developed systems, open-source programs, and commercial applications. Provide efficient data management support.
• Use standard pipelines for data processing and manipulation in advance of performing analysis in a manner that best enables the analysis plan.
• Contribute to the development of additional pipeline functionality and changes by providing knowledge of both collaboration-specific requirements and bioinformatics discipline advances.
• Advocate for specific collaboration requirements for continual advancement of shared pipeline and code resources.
• Provide collaboration-specific transparency for data processing and pre-analysis, including sample- and cohort-level status.
• Coding (20%): Code and generally support code and applications on behalf of collaborative project and/or team.
• Within the context of the collaboration or project, develop and apply best practices to code development.
• Establish requirements with the project team.
• Review existing applications and code sources (both commercial and open source) and selection of best strategy for development or adoption.
• Advocate for chosen strategy to project team by showing value of approach
• Develop best practices for project-based code development, QC, and execution consist with the expectations of specific collaborations.
• Regularly seek peer-to-peer code reviews by participating in informal and formal critical code reviews.
• Data Analysis (20%): Analyze data of high complexity by applying sound statistical and commonly accepted bioinformatics methods to -omics data primarily under the direction of the collaborative project team.
• Develop robust analysis plans independently with regular peer-to-peer review in both informal and formal settings.
• Incorporate more advanced applications and methods into analysis.
• Develop at least one specialty analytical or biomedical area that serves the collaborative team.
• Collaboration (20%): Establish role within collaborative project team as primary bioinformatics resource.
• Contribute to and influence project-level management by serving as bioinformatics point.
• Define and promote boundaries of support by assessing all stakeholders, including bioinformatics management, collaborator expectations, and funding levels and mechanisms.
• Regularly discuss satisfaction and expectations with collaborators; continually advocate for clear understanding of role.
• Develop new collaborations with high degree of supervision.
• Academic Output (20%): Develop presentations, grant sections, and manuscript sections with subsequent review by peers and mentors.
• Regularly contribute to bioinformatics-focused manuscripts and publications.
• Regularly contribute to podium presentations and posters.
• Contribute to bioinformatics sections of grant and award proposals.

Education Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree Required
• Master's Degree biological or computational discipline Preferred

Experience Qualifications

• At least three (3) years experience in applied bioinformatics, genomics, and computational work Required
• Experience with management and analysis of complex data types. Required
• At least four (4) years of experience in applied bioinformatics, genomics, and computational work Preferred
• Experience with Python, Perl, or other languages Preferred
• Experience with pipeline or workflow development frameworks Preferred
• Experience or knowledge of technologies commonly used in biological labs, such as PCR, cloning, electrophoresis gels, and cell culture.

Preferred Experience

• Four (4) or more years of experience in applied bioinformatics, genomics, and computational work. This experience can be inclusive of a relevant PhD dissertation.
• Knowledge of cancer biology and/or genomics

Skills and Abilities

• Strong UNIX/LINUX expertise required.
• Proficiency in R or similar commonly used bioinformatics language required.
• Proficiency in various open source and commercial bioinformatics resources and software required.
• Knowledge of the working mechanism of microarray, NGS, mass spectrometry, or other high-throughput technologies and awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, as well as applicability to a specific biological problem is preferred.
• Familiarity with resources of genomic data sets and analysis tools, such as UCSC Genome Browser, Bioconductor, ENCODE, and NCBI databases is required.
• Ability to correctly select and perform statistical tests for most types of genomic data, and to properly interpret their results in the scenario of a specific study is preferred.
• Ability to interact with biologists and clinicians during a scientific discussion is required.
• Accountability and attention to timelines.
• Excellent organization and communication skills with an emphasis on strong presentation skills.
• Ability to independently plan and execute analyses of moderate complexity required.
• Ability to provide objective validation of results required.
• Ability to work in a team environment.

To carry out its mission, CHOP is committed to supporting the health of our patients, families, workforce, and global community. As a condition of employment, CHOP employees who work in patient care buildings or who have patient facing responsibilities must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and receive an annual influenza vaccine.

Employees may request exemptions for valid religious and medical reasons. Start dates may be delayed until candidates are immunized or exemption requests are reviewed.

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