Bioinformatician with expertise in applied structural biology

at the Department of biochemistry and biophysics. Closing date: 28 March 2022

As a national hub for molecular biosciences in Sweden, SciLifeLab develops and maintains unique research infrastructure, services and data resources for life science. The overall aim of SciLifeLab is to facilitate cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary life science research and promote its translation to the benefit of society. About 200 research groups, 1500 researchers and 40 national infrastructure units are associated with SciLifeLab, with two main centers located in Stockholm and Uppsala, but with national SciLifeLab units at all major Swedish universities.

The SciLifeLab and Wallenberg National Program for Data-Driven Life Science (DDLS) is a 12-year initiative that focuses on data-driven research, within fields essential for improving people’s lives, detecting and treating diseases, protecting biodiversity and creating sustainability.

The program will train and recruit the next generation of data-driven life scientists and create strong and globally competitive computational and data science capabilities in Swedish life science.

The program aims to strengthen national collaborations between universities, bridge the research communities of life and data sciences, and create partnerships with industry, healthcare and other national and international actors.

As part of the DDLS program, the bioinformatics platform at SciLifeLab (NBIS) provides bioinformatics support to scientifically outstanding research projects at Swedish universities. NBIS is a large national infrastructure with around 100 staff, providing advanced support, infrastructure and training to the Swedish life science research community.

We are now looking for a bioinformatician with expertise in structural biology to join the NBIS Support team, to establish structural biology as a new national support function as a part of the DDLS initiative.

SciLifeLab’s new Integrated Structural Biology platform and other large initiatives like MAX IV and ESS put Sweden in a uniquely strong position for structural biology, and together with recent advances in protein structure prediction this is a very rapidly evolving area with implications across many research fields.

The NBIS support team currently comprises close to 60 full-time senior bioinformaticians across Sweden, with expertise in data analysis across a broad range of technologies and research areas.

We here seek skilled and motivated candidates to establish national bioinformatics support primarily focused on analysis of cryo-EM data. The service will be developed in close collaboration with the SciLifeLab Cryo-EM unit, holding state-of-the-art equipment and expertise in single particle cryo-EM, cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET), and microED, providing services from specimen optimization to data acquisition to more than 150 research groups in the Nordics. These services will now be complemented with advanced bioinformatics support for cryo-EM image processing, structure determination and model analysis, with strong connections to other structural biology technologies and structure prediction methods.

You will get the opportunity to work in a vibrant research environment and with a range of interesting projects in collaboration with different research groups. We are a strong and collaborative team of bioinformatics experts and this, in conjunction with the broad competence within NBIS, the Cryo-EM unit and the larger SciLifeLab community, creates an excellent forum to maintain cutting-edge expertise and acquire new skills. In addition to direct involvement in research projects, the work includes teaching on advanced national courses and potentially method and data resource development in close collaboration with the SciLifeLab Data Centre and the emerging DDLS Data Area Nodes. 

The position is placed at SciLifeLab Stockholm, which is situated at the research campus of Karolinska Institutet in northern Stockholm.

Main responsibilities
The main responsibilities are to:

• Carry out advanced data analyses within nationally prioritized projects.
• Potentially develop tools and workflows for such analyses.
• Educate other scientists in bioinformatics through collaboration within supported projects, teaching at advanced national courses and consultations.
• Take part in the continuous development and improvement of the SciLifeLab Bioinformatics Platform, the Cryo-EM unit, and the DDLS program at a national level.

Qualification requirements
We are looking for a highly motivated scientist with a strong background and interest in addressing biological or medical questions through analysis of molecular structures.
The successful candidate should have:

• A PhD in structural biology or other relevant area.
• Extensive experience with analysis of data from Cryo-EM, X-ray crystallography or NMR.
• Fluent oral and written communication skills in English.
• Strong skills in cooperation and communication.

Postdoctoral studies are a strong merit but not a requirement. Knowledge of one or more programming languages is also a strong merit, and skills in experimental design would be beneficial. Specific knowledge of Cryo-EM processing software such as cryoSPARC, Relion, cisTEM or others is another strong merit. Experience with structure prediction tools such as Rosetta and AlphaFold is also a strong merit. Knowledge of software for tomographic reconstruction and subtomogram averaging such as IMOD, emClarity, M or others would be considered a plus. Great importance will be given to personal suitability.