Postdoctoral Fellow (ref. PD/24/02)

Location

Barcelona | Spain

Job description

Created in 2005 by the Generalitat de Catalunya (Government of Catalonia) and the University of Barcelona, IRB Barcelona is a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence—a seal that was awarded in 2011.

The institute is devoted to conducting research of excellence in biomedicine and to transferring results to clinical practice, thus improving people’s quality of life, while simultaneously promoting the training of outstanding researchers, technology transfer, and public communication of science. Its 28 laboratories and seven core facilities address basic questions in biology and are orientated to diseases such as cancer, metastasis, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and rare conditions.

IRB Barcelona is an international centre that hosts 400 members and 35 nationalities. It is located in the Barcelona Science Park. IRB Barcelona forms part of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) and the “Xarxa de Centres de Recerca de Catalunya” (CERCA).

IRB Barcelona seeks a talented Postdoctoral Fellow  to join our structural bioinformatics team in the Molecular Modeling and Bioinformatics group ( Structural Bioinformatics Program), under the framework of the “XNA-Hub” initiative, funded by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III witihin the project PMPTA23/00006.

The project pursues the creation of a platform to ease the development of therapies based on xeno-nucleic acids, and implies the use of molecular dynamics (MD) tools in a high-throughput (HT) regime and the development of automated tools for the parameterization of nucleic acids derivatives. The candidate will work in a wide consortium including companies and experimental groups and should be ready to interact with experimental biophysicists and molecular biologists.

DUTIES: 

We are looking for a candidate to work on theoretical computational studies of nucleic acids , involving programing new algorithms and scientific workflows , using all kinds of classical and quantum mechanics methods ( MD, QM, QM/MM ), and applying bio-statistics and artificial intelligence (AI) to obtain and refine new modified oligonucleotide parameters.

EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS:

Must Have – Required:  

• Bachelor degree or higher in Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Computational Sciences, Bioinformatics , or similar.
• PhD in Chemistry, Physics, Computational Sciences, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, Biomedicine or similar.
• Experience in computational Molecular Dynamics (MD) technique: simulations and analysis (AMBER, GROMACS, OpenMM) and visualization (VMD, PyMol), ideally on nucleic acids.
• Experience in High Performance Computing infrastructures: workload managers (Slurm), remote connections (ssh), file transfer (scp, rsync).
• Experience in shell and scripting languages (Bash, CSH, Perl, Python, R).
• Excellent Linux OS skills.
• Fluent English and good teamwork skills.

Desirable - Knowledge of the following technologies is advisable:

• Experience in computational Quantum Mechanics (QM) technique: simulations and analysis (Gaussian, GAMESS).
• Programming languages C, Fortran, Perl.
• Environment Modules (HPC).
• Experience in Version-control systems: Git (GitHub, GitLab).

WORKING CONDITIONS & ENTITLEMENTS:

• Working conditions : Employed in compliance with Spanish legislation and regulations under a full-time contract. Employees receive the benefits of the Spanish Social Security system covering sickness, maternity/paternity leaves and injuries at work.
• Estimated annual gross salary: Salary commensurate with experience and qualifications.
• International environment:  The opportunity to join a prestigious, diverse and inclusive international research institution and to become a member of an established research group.
• The unique opportunity to work:
  • within an international consortium that brings together the most prominent European researchers in the field of computational biology.
  • closely with a High Performance Computing (HPC) centre as the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC), with one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe (Marenostrum IV), and recently selected by EuroHPC to host one of the largest European supercomputers (Marenostrum V).
  • in multiple state-of-the-art platforms, such as Cloud infrastructures, Docker containers or HPC supercomputers.
  • in a multidisciplinary group which is currently involved in several National and European projects related to computational biology.
• Benefits:  Continuous training in a high-quality environment with unique professional career opportunities. 

HOW TO APPLY & SELECTION PROCESS:

• Deadline for applications : 29/03/2024 (If no suitable candidate is found, the deadline will be extended) 
• Number of positions available : 1
• Selection process:
  • Pre-selection : Will be based on CV, motivation letter, experience, management of research and innovation. 
  • Interviews : Short-listed candidates will be interviewed.
  • Job offer : Will be sent to the successful candidate after the interview. 

Note: The strengths and weaknesses of the applications will be provided upon request.

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