Employment Opportunities at NESCent

Employment Opportunities at NESCent

Graduate Student Assistant - Assessment Analyst for Evolutionary
Biology Programs (Paid)

The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), which is a multi-university center funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is looking for a graduate student assistant to support our 'Science of Science' project as an Assessment Analyst. The Science of Science project has been collecting assessment data on visiting scientists, including data on who they collaborate with and what outcomes they have achieved.

Job description: The Assessment Analyst will assist in analyzing data and creating statistical reports based on the assessment data, thus prior experience with SAS, SPSS, R, or other statistical software is required. The Assessment Analyst would work as part of an interdisciplinary team, and gain experience applying statistical knowledge to the domain of scientific collaboration. Please see Science of Science for more information about this project and NESCent.

How to apply: Interested applicants should contact Phillip Grosshans Assistant Director for Administration, at phillipg@nescent.org.

Postdoctoral Opportunity: Phenotype Bioinformatics Applied to Evo-Devo

Phenoscape is an initiative to link knowledge about the genetic mechanisms of development and evolutionary phenotypic diversity. The Phenoscape Knowledgebase currently includes a rich collection of over half a million phenotypes for over 2,000 fish taxa and over 4,000 genes, all annotated using shared ontologies to enable analysis across taxa and genes. The National Science Foundation recently made a four year award to extend Phenoscape’s semantic technology for the integration of phenotype data across the vertebrates, with a focus on the genetics and evolution of the vertebrate fin to limb transition.

We are currently recruiting for a bioinformatics postdoc with an interest in (1) semi-automatically capturing phenotypic knowledge from the literature and (2) using ontologies to measure biological similarity between phenotypes. The postdoc is encouraged to have an independent project that uses the Phenoscape Knowledgebase as a research platform, e.g. to address questions about the evolution and development of vertebrate limbs.

The position is based at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Durham, NC, under the supervision of Hilmar Lapp and Todd Vision. The postdoc will have the opportunity to take advantage of the expertise of a large interdisciplinary team, including Dr. Paula Mabee (University of South Dakota), Dr. Chris Mungall (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) and Dr. Hong Cui (University of Arizona), among others.

Applicants should have a PhD in Evolutionary Biology, Bioinformatics or a related field. Prior experience with comparative biology and ontologies would be desirable. Two years of funding are currently available, with further opportunities for independently funded research.

To apply, please send cover letter, CV, and contact information for three references to Hilmar Lapp at hlapp@nescent.org. Inquiries may be directed to the same address. The post is open immediately and will remain open until filled.

GMOD Community Support Specialist

Are you fascinated by genomics and bioinformatics? Are you passionate about collaborative open-source software? Do you enjoy teaching and working with scientists? Are you a natural communicator?

The Generic Model Organism Database project (GMOD) is a collection of open source software tools for creating and managing biological, and particularly genomic, databases. GMOD has a large, highly distributed, and dynamic community of software users and developers. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an opening for a GMOD Community Support Specialist, to be based at the US National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina, while serving the international community of GMOD users.

Job Description: The incumbent will present tutorials; organize short courses, conference sessions, GMOD meetings and other community building activities; survey user needs; liaise between users and developers on GMOD mailing lists; and oversee the community wiki and news feeds. The incumbent will collaborate closely with the GMOD Coordinator (Scott Cain, The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research) and other distributed personnel. See GMOD Community Support for more background. The position offers a competitive salary and the incumbent will receive a comprehensive benefits package as an SPA employee within the UNC system. Funding is anticipated to be available for three years.

Qualifications: Required qualifications include: excellent written and verbal communication skills; team orientation with strong interpersonal skills. Preferred qualifications include: an MS or PhD in biology, computer science or related field; three or more years of experience with genome database administration or curation, preferably in a GMOD environment; at least one year of experience with web content management, ideally using MediaWiki; freedom to travel 5-15 weeks/yr.

To Apply: Please provide a cover letter and CV, including contact information for three references, to Hilmar Lapp, Assistant Director of Informatics, NESCent, at hlapp@nescent.org, and submit materials through the UNC HR website. Inquiries may be addressed to H. Lapp by email or by phone at 919.668.5288.