Mots-Clés

Statistical Genetics, Clustering, Asthma, UKBiobank

Description

The Statistical Genetics unit within the department of Computational Biology at the Institut Pasteur seeks a motivated and talented Postdoctoral Fellow. The successful candidate will participate in a funded collaborative project aiming at characterizing the heterogeneity of Asthma with genetic data.

Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases with more than 300 million cases worldwide. Asthma is highly heterogeneous presenting as mild forms responding to treatment in some patients while being debilitating and resistant to treatment in others. Previous studies trying to identify sub-type of asthma relied on epidemiological and molecular data. Those studies characterized further asthma heterogeneity but faced reverse causation issues, i.e. the difficulty to determine the cause-and-effect direction between the outcome and associated factors. Numerous germline genetic variations have been found associated with asthma. Because those variations are mostly unchanged from birth to death, they are immune to reverse causation and therefore offer a relevant framework to investigate asthma heterogeneity. This project aims at investigating the potential of genetic variations for identifying asthma subtypes.

The main topic of this post-doc will be to develop/adapt and apply state of the art clustering techniques to a broad range of GWAS summary statistics related to asthma. The successful applicant will be asked to:

1. Study, with simulations, the effect of the genetic data specificities on clustering accuracy and replicability.

2. Apply clustering algorithms to asthma related GWAS summary statistics and ensure the quality and replicability of detected clusters.

3. Participate, with the help of a software engineer, to the development of clustering software designed for genetic data. 

The position has a statistical and computational component with a particular emphasis on multivariate approaches. The project involves real data applications on large-scale multidimensional cohorts and is conducted in collaboration with the Genomic Epidemiology group at INSERM.

QUALIFICATIONS

The selected candidate should have a quantitative background with statistical and computational skills. He/she should be qualified with at least one programming language (e.g. Python, R). Knowledge of biology or genetics would be considered an asset. The candidate will typically hold a Ph.D in Statistics/Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Bioinformatics, Computer Science or other relevant disciplines with a quantitative research background. Practical experience working with genetic data sets, and developing statistical methods are desirable. We are a team committed to foster a fair, inclusive and diverse work environment. Diversity has been scientifically established as a key factor to improve scientific objectivity. Hence, all applicants will be evaluated solely based on qualification regardless of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race or disability.

THE INSTITUT PASTEUR

The Institut Pasteur is an internationally renowned center for biomedical research that stands out in many disciplines. The campus, founded in 1887 by Louis Pasteur and located in the center of Paris, hosts over 1,300 researchers and 300 doctoral students from over 60 nationalities. It is a creative and inspiring environment full of expertise and opportunities to connect and learn. The department of Computational Biology hosts multiple teams and a biostatistics/bioinformatics hub which includes over 50 PhD engineers specialized in computational biology.