Founding Director, Cancer Bioinformatics Shared Resource

Position Description

The Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center (SCC) at Washington University School of Medicine (WashU Medicine) seeks an impactful scientist and collaborative leader to serve as the Founding Director of the Cancer Bioinformatics Shared Resource (CBSR). The Director will hold a faculty appointment within the Department of Genetics and will have the unique opportunity to recruit, develop, and lead a new team of bioinformaticians for cancer research. The CBSR will provide service, collaboration, and training in cancer bioinformatics for members of the SCC within the School of Medicine, which currently ranks second in the nation in NIH funding.

The Director will be entrusted with the CBSR’s mission—to empower the cancer scientific community with cutting-edge bioinformatic approaches and expertise to interrogate large multimodal oncology datasets. The CBSR will assist Siteman investigators in designing and performing multi-omics-based projects focused on improving cancer treatments and outcomes.

The Director will recruit and mentor a diverse staff of bioinformaticians and computer scientists. With support from the SCC Senior Leadership and the Department of Genetics administration, the Director will manage personnel recruitment and govern CBSR revenue for operations and future growth. Globally, the Director will create and support a vision for this interactive, technology-forward, innovative, and service-orientated bioinformatic resource. In doing so, the Director will collaborate with Directors of other Shared Resources, centers, and investigators to further empower cancer research at SCC.

The CBSR will occupy space near the Genome Technology Access Center and the Center for Translational Bioinformatics. This will facilitate synergy between CBSR and the large computational and informatic efforts at both Centers, including interdisciplinary and integrative multi-omic combinations of cancer genomics, proteomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, functional genomics, and imaging.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities

• Recruit, lead, and manage a team of bioinformaticians who provide cancer center members with robust, innovative analyses of large and diverse types of cancer data.
• The CBSR will analyze and integrate public cancer data (, TCGA, Depmap, CPTAC) with project-specific data types from cancer center members. Adherence to rigorous statistical analyses will be a guiding principle.
• Develop and implement various computational and database solutions to meet data collection, quality control, analysis, and visualization needs.
• The CBSR will supervise local database construction and structure, including updating, validating, curating, and harmonizing longitudinal, cross-sectional data from different sources.
• Lead the response to data and analytical queries from Principal Investigators, preparing and presenting reports and technical presentations for grant submissions, manuscripts, and conference presentations.

Basic Qualifications

• PhD in Oncological Sciences, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Statistical Genetics, Biostatistics, Medical Statistics, Genetics, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field.
• A minimum of 7 years of experience in bioinformatics, with experience in pipeline development and software implementation for genomics and multi-omics analyses.
• Ability to perform genomics and transcriptomics analyses with integrative analyses extending to publicly available data (, TCGA, CPTAC, depmap).
• Expertise in scientific programming languages (, R, Python, Perl, Julia).
  

Additional Qualifications

• Administrative leadership experience in hiring, managing, and developing a technical team.
  Successful track record in project and pipeline design and consultation for collaborators.
  Experience with clinically related bioinformatic processes and data.
  Interest and experience in developing novel methods to be applied in a cancer research setting is highly desired.
• Ability to effectively communicate project progress, write technical summaries, prepare presentations, and participate in publications and grant writing.
• Strong interpersonal skills that empower leadership and mentorship.