Research Associate - Bioinformatics, Cancer Proteomics & Personalized Medicine

Job Summary

The Lange Lab is a creative, forward looking and nimble team of scientists that analyzes and decodes the human proteome to find new treatment opportunities for children with cancer.

We embrace tough challenges and take pride in pushing fundamental research all the way to improving patient’s care today.

We lead activities in the Canadian Pediatric Cancer Consortium (CPCC) and Precision Oncology for Young People (PROFYLE) to improve precision oncology for children by integrating genomic, proteomic, drug sensitivity, phenotypic and clinical information.

Together with our partners we have informed the treatment of patients and paved the way to bring precision oncology to the next level.

We are seeking a highly skilled and passionate Research Associate who joins us to build and grow proteomics guided precision oncology with us.

If you are a self-motivated multitasker who enjoys integrating and mining complex -omics data, build analysis and reporting pipelines and find the weak spot in a patient’s cancer that may change their live we would like to hear from you!

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of the Canadian Pediatric Cancer Consortium that brings together hundreds of Clinicians, Scientists, Patients and Policymakers across Canada to re-think pediatric cancer research and care from the ground up.

Organizational Status :

The successful candidate will report directly to Dr. Philipp Lange, Canada Research Chair in Translational Proteomics of Pediatric Malignancies, and will work in a strongly collaborative and collegial fashion with cross-functional project team members across Canada and the world to meet research goals and objectives.

Work Performed :

• Provide leadership, strategic direction, and basic / translational research in bioinformatics of cancer
• May analyze proteomic data from patient biopsies to identify potentially targetable perturbations and present your findings to molecular tumor boards
• May develop data repositories and analysis pipelines to streamline analysis and interpretation and work with leading data scientists across the country to advance date sharing and interoperability
• May develop strategies to better integrate molecular (proteomics, genomic, metabolomic) and phenotypic (clinical, immunophenotype, drug perturbation, ) data using classical and machine learning approaches
• May engage with team members and collaborators to make key contributions to experimental design, data visualization & interpretation and overall direction of studies
• May write manuscripts and grant applications and represent the laboratory in national and international initiatives, lead collaborative projects, train graduate and undergraduate students and introduce new methodologies to the lab

Supervision Received :

The successful applicant is expected to work independently under the general direction of Dr. Lange, who will be available to provide consultation on unusual problems and project developments.

Supervision Given :

Assist with training graduate students and lab staff; provide input on staff / co-op student selection and performance evaluation.

Qualifications :

• PhD and Postdoctoral training in bioinformatics, computational biology, cancer biology, proteomics or related area
• Strong statistical foundation and demonstrated strong expertise in R or python for data analysis
• Fluent in written and spoken English and demonstrated excellence in scientific writing
• The ability to express complex ideas in understandable ways, and to communicate effectively with people from different fields
• Demonstrated ability to visualize complex data effectively
• Exceptional understanding of biological mechanisms and well read
• Experience working with proteomics or transcriptomics data
• A demonstrated ability to find creative and functional solutions to complicated problems
• Demonstrated ability to lead projects to completion
• Excellent documentation skills with impeccable attention to detail

Research Team & Environment : Located at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute (BCCHRI), the leading pediatric research center in Western Canada, the successful candidate will be embedded in the highly innovative and interdisciplinary research environment spanning BC Children’s Hospital, UBC, and BC Cancer Agency.

Vancouver repeatedly ranks among the most livable places in the world and combines excellence in research with high quality of life.

Excellent opportunities for personal and professional development are provided.

The successful candidate will be part of a dynamic team of experimental and computational scientists and embedded in Canadian Pediatric Cancer Consortium, where they will work with basic scientists, pathologists, analysts and clinicians.

Will be working in the newly renovated digital-health offices with direct access to state-of-the-art compute infrastructure and software and leading-edge mass-spectrometry setups, as well as, cell and molecular biology facilities, mouse and chicken chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) modeling platforms, next-generation sequencing, flow cytometry, and imaging infrastructure.

The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC is a hybrid, academically intensive Department within the UBC Faculty of Medicine whose activities span a broad spectrum of teaching, research, and academic service, often performed in the milieu of clinical practice, and are ultimately devoted to improving the care, treatment, and well-being of patients.

The Department offers academic degrees at the bachelor’s (Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Science (BMLSc)) and graduate (MSc, PhD) levels with the graduate program, one of the largest in the Faculty of Medicine, which has been recognized by UBC for its quality.

The Department plays a major role in the MD undergraduate program and offers an accredited residency-training program. Faculty members participate across a spectrum of research from basic investigative to translational to clinical applied research and are recognized locally, nationally and internationally for their excellence.

Consequence of Error :

The successful applicant is expected to exercise a considerable amount of judgment, responsibility, and initiative in determining work procedures and methods.

They must carefully observe and evaluate their work. All work is subject to assessment by Dr. Lange. Consistent poor judgment decisions or errors can result in data loss or incorrect data interpretation, retraction of manuscripts, invalidation of subsequent studies and expensive experiments with implications and current and future funding.

How to apply :

This position is located within a health-care facility. Therefore, this position requires successful verification of full vaccination against Covid-19 provided prior to the start date, as required by the provincial health mandate.