弗雷德哈钦森癌症研究中心博士后职位招聘–统计学、数学、计算机科学

Overview

Cures Start Here. At Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, home to three Nobel laureates, interdisciplinary teams of world-renowned scientists seek new and innovative ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening diseases. Fred Hutch’s pioneering work in bone marrow transplantation led to the development of immunotherapy, which harnesses the power of the immune system to treat cancer. An independent, nonprofit research institute based in Seattle, Fred Hutch houses the nation’s first cancer prevention research program, as well as the clinical coordinating center of the Women’s Health Initiative and the international headquarters of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network. Careers Start Here.

At Fred Hutch, we believe that the innovation, collaboration, and rigor that result from diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission of eliminating cancer and related diseases. We seek employees who bring different and innovative ways of seeing the world and solving problems. Fred Hutch is in pursuit of becoming an antiracist organization.  We are committed to ensuring that all candidates hired share our commitment to diversity, antiracism, and inclusion.  

Matsen Lab Environment
The environment in the Matsen group is lively yet casual, with a strong emphasis on collaborative work between postdocs, PhD students, interns, and programmers. 

The Center is housed in a lovely campus on Lake Union a short walk from downtown, and a slightly longer walk from the University of Washington. The Matsen group is in the newly-remodeled Steam Plant building overlooking the lake. We believe that science is for everyone. We have had researchers with a variety of backgrounds, including Latinx, Black, Asian, and Middle Eastern. We have had women, men, gay, and straight, and we welcome people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. We have had successful high schoolers, postdocs, people who were the first in their family to attend college, and one who had decided that college wasn’t for them. We have had researchers with backgrounds in biology, physics, statistics, math, and computer science.

We acknowledge the historical and present barriers for underrepresented groups, and work to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in computational biology. Members of underrepresented groups are especially encouraged to apply.

Please read our expectations of group members. By applying for this position, we expect that you will fulfill these expectations. We enthusiastically solicit feedback on these expectations or requests for clarification.

Responsibilities

During the next few years we expect SARS-CoV-2 to continue its transformation into an endemic virus, as vaccines mitigate but do not eliminate its circulation. In many ways we expect SARS-CoV-2 to become analogous to flu, where yearly vaccinations are designed to be as effective as possible against the most important circulating strains. However, because of the time required to manufacture and then administer the vaccine, we must decide months ahead of time what the most important strains are to include. 

The purpose of this position is to develop algorithms to forecast the dominant viral variants given a diverse collection of densely sampled data. In addition to epidemiological data, we will have experimentally-derived estimates of the phenotype of large pools of spike variants, both in terms of their function and their ability to escape antibody-mediated immune pressure. Using machine-learning techniques we will predict the fitness of additional combinations of mutations alongside experimentally inferred phenotypes, and use these predictions as part of our overall system to predict the long-term trajectory of viral variants. This will be a close collaboration with the Bedford and Bloom labs.

We are seeking a postdoc to develop predictive algorithms and help bring them into production on nextstrain.org. This includes:

• Reading relevant literature to understand the current state of the art.
• Develop new models integrating diverse data types.
• Developing benchmarks and working together with staff to evaluate algorithms on those benchmarks.
• Working with the Bedford lab to put a prediction system into production.
• Collaborating with trainees and staff from three labs.
• Contributing to writing papers and software testing.
   

This position will be housed in the Matsen lab; see our website for more information about what we do.

Qualifications

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• The successful applicant will have a PhD in statistics, mathematics, computer science, or another relevant discipline, and will have a successful track record of independent research.
• Creative and thoughtful
• Solid in their mathematics/statistics background
• A capable computer programmer
• Familiar with modern Python-based tooling in machine-learning
• A careful writer and diligent editor
• Excited to contribute to an important goal

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:
If you are interested in this position, please submit the following materials:

• A CV summarizing your education and work experience so far.
• The names and email addresses of two references.
• Two publications featuring your work.
• A code sample representing code that you are proud of. This doesn’t have to be long or especially fancy, but should be clean and do something non-trivial. Ideally this would be present as a commit to a code repository such as GitHub, but emailed code is fine as well.

Fred Hutch has a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine requirement, with exceptions only for approved medical or religious accommodations.
As a condition of employment, newly hired employees must provide proof of vaccination or initiate the accommodations process before their first day of employment. 

A statement describing your commitment and contributions toward greater diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism in your career or that will be made through your work at Fred Hutch is requested of all finalists.

Our Commitment to Diversity

We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) Employer. We are committed to cultivating a workplace in which diverse perspectives and experiences are welcomed and respected. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, ancestry, national origin, sex, age, disability (physical or mental), marital or veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, political ideology, or membership in any other legally protected class. We are an Affirmative Action employer. We encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds to apply and desire priority referrals of protected veterans. If due to a disability you need assistance/and or a reasonable accommodation during the application or recruiting process, please send a request to our Employee Services Center at hrops@fredhutch.org or by calling 206-667-4700.  Not ready to apply? Connect with us for general consideration.