[BioC] PhD Position in Bioinformatics at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland

[Florent Baty]

One PhD Position is immediately available at the Pulmonary Gene Research 
group of the University Hospital Basel (Switzerland).

http://www.math-jobs.com/0383.html

Description

The Pulmonary Gene Research is part of the Pneumology department at the 
University Hospital Basel. Our research is multidisciplinary involving 
the expertise of clinicians, molecular biologists, biostatisticians and 
bioinformaticians. Our work is focused on the understanding of lung 
diseases at the genomic level using the microarray technology. Our 
current collaborative projects include disease class prediction in 
sarcoidosis, biomarker identification in lung cancer, gene profiling of 
fibroblasts treated with steroids, etc. Methodological and analytical 
aspects of our research are of highest importance. These include 
statistical modelling, multivariate data analysis and "omics" data mining.

We are looking for a highly motivated PhD student with a strong 
background in biostatistics and computational biology and preferably 
with an experience in microarray data analysis. The PhD student should 
have excellent English oral and written communication skills.

The research topic of the PhD position focuses on modelling of sources 
of variation in microarray data. In order to remove non-biological 
variations from microarray data and to scale and stabilise the data 
variance, several normalisation procedures were proposed. Before 
analysing microarray experiments, pre-processing techniques are 
required. The choice of the normalisation method is crucial and may have 
a high impact on the following steps of the analysis. In addition, some 
systematic biases which are not related to the biological response (e.g. 
batch effects) must be controlled and possibly removed from the 
analysis. The PhD student will screen the different statistical 
approaches which have been developed so far in genomics and in other 
different fields of science (e.g. chemometrics, environmetrics). A 
comparative analysis of the most appropriate techniques will be 
performed with microarray data. The PhD student will be involved in the 
development of new methodological refinements and optimisation of 
normalisation, effects removing, sample classification and disease class 
prediction. This project should lead to the creation of statistical 
package including a set of methods for the analysis of microarray data 
structures.

Requirements for the PhD student are a Master's diploma in biostatistics 
or equivalent. Applicants should have a knowledge of multivariate data 
analysis, and should be familiar with R, Bioconductor (optional), and 
other open sources software solutions. Knowledge of C++ would be 
advantageous.

Information and application with CV and letter of motivation:

PD M. Brutsche
Pneumologie
Universitätsspital
Petersgraben 4
CH-4031 Basel

Tel. +41 61 265 51 95
e-mail: mbrutsche at uhbs.ch <mailto:mbrutsche at uhbs.ch>