One of the top-ranked universities in the country, Northwestern University, combines innovative teaching and pioneering research in a highly collaborative environment that transcends traditional academic boundaries. Northwestern provides students, faculty and staff with exceptional opportunities for intellectual, personal, and professional growth.
We are seeking a biomedical scientist to help organize, restructure, and assemble disease knowledge into the open source Disease Ontology. This person will lead ontology development as part of a team comprised of scientists and software developers at Northwestern and the University of Maryland, in order to further develop the OBO Foundry domain ontology Human Disease Ontology. This NIH NCRR funded project (2 years) is jointly led by Warren Kibbe (Northwestern University) and Lynn Schriml (University of Maryland, Baltimore).
The incumbent will have content and curatorial responsibility for the refinement and application of the OBO Foundry Disease Ontology. The incumbent will work with collaborators and a team of curators to structure and refine the disease ontology to meet the needs disease ontology needs of the biomedical research, clinical research, and medical communities. This will include the analysis of the existing DO structure, application of good ontology practices to curate the Disease Ontology, and working with medical experts to embed their knowledge of disease in the Disease Ontology. The successful candidate will have a demonstrated ability for independent, critical thinking and excellent communication and teamwork skills.
Required qualifications
• Ph.D. degree or another advanced degree in a biomedical field
• Ability to communicate well and work as part of a distributed research team
Preferred qualifications
• Ph.D. degree in biological sciences with expert knowledge of medicine or an M.D.
• Experience using or creating ontologies
• Past experience in project coordination, large scale biology, familiarity with basic UNIX commands, spreadsheets, and commonly used biological research tools such as BLAST and Literature Database search is desired.
• A working knowledge of a scripting language and/or SQL will be considered an asset but not required.
For more information about the project, see the following:
http://do-wiki.nubic.northwestern.edu/
* Du P, Feng G, Flatow J, Song J, Holko M, Kibbe WA, Lin SM. From disease ontology to disease-ontology lite: statistical methods to adapt a general-purpose ontology for the test of gene-ontology associations. Bioinformatics (2009) 25:i63-8. [PubMed ID 19478018]
* Osborne JD, Lin SM, Zhu LJ, Kibbe WA. Mining biomedical data using MetaMap Transfer (MMtx) and the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). Methods Mol Biol. (2007) 408:153-69. [PubMed ID 18314582]
How to apply
Please send cover letter, resume/CV, and the contact information for three references to the Northwestern Project PI, Dr. Warren Kibbe (wakibbe@northwestern.edu). Further inquiries about the position may be directed to Dr. Kibbe by email, or by phone at +1-312-503-3229.
In order to be considered for the Research Associate (senior Postdoc) position, the candidate must have 3 or more years of postdoctoral/scientist research experience and supporting publications in peer reviewed international journals. The selection committee will judge the candidate based on the qualifications above; in addition, to showing the ability to lead on a scientific project as an independent researcher.
Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer. Members of historically underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.
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