We are looking for a readily available research scientist in this challenging multi-disciplinary field, who is capable of developing this research area within WBVR to the next level. Candidates will be given the opportunity to manage their own projects within the group. To acquire these we expect the candidate to have a pro-active approach in developing projects also with our external clients.

Experience requested:

• Marker-based microbiota analysis (16S/ITS)
• Statistics in context of (classical) genomics projects
• Data mining and visualisation of various Omics disciplines

Requirements:

• Finished PhD (Computational biology preferably in ecological context)
• Should master programming languages, Required R and BASH/Unix shell scripting; Preferably Perl and Python
• English (both speaking/writing)
• Ability to identify opportunities for valorisation of bioinformatics research
• Affinity with acquisition
• Team player

You will be asked to deliver a Certificate of Good Conduct.

• a salary in max. scale 11 of the CAO WR, depending on experience
• a contract for a period of 1 year with possibilities of extension (for 36 hrs p.w.)
• a challenging and rapidly expanding research area
• modern employment conditons with 23 days of leave, with the possibility to build up another 25 (compensation) days when you choose to work 40 hours a week
• The work location is Lelystad

Wageningen University & Research

Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR) in Lelystad is a knowledge-driven project organization with an excellent international reputation in the field of animal disease control and fundamental animal health research. The staff of about 250 highly qualified personnel undertakes fundamental and applied research for a large diversity of clients including the government. WBVR has an annual turnover of about 34 million euro and is part of Wageningen University and Research.

The multi-omics and bioinformatics group within the department of Infection Biology of Wageningen Bioveterinary Research has developed itself into various directions including metagenomics and reversed vaccinology approaches. Besides their own computational biology oriented projects, it also provides bioinformatics support to a large variety of projects within and outside WBVR. Integration, modelling and visualisation of large (usually) omics-oriented datasets provides the basis for this rapidly developing research area.
For microbiota analysis, we developed 16S-barcoding based characterisation pipelines and provide advanced ecological analysis to support many internal and external customers (from sample to advanced data interpretation). Maintenance, functional/phenotypic extension and potential valorisation of this area is part of your work. The second part of the work involves discriminatory feature discovery/classification in a variety of genomics and reversed vaccinology approaches. Techniques include Bayesian genetic/genomic population analysis (BAPS), differential genomic/proteomic k-mer testing, and knowledge driven integrated immunological classification algorithms. Identified features will be used for developing differential diagnostics and helps to understand the host-pathogen interaction mechanisms.