Postdoctoral Fellowship Opening in Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics

Date Posted: Feb 11, 2022

Faculty Member: Adam Christian Naj

Position Type: NIH Grant

Number of Slots: 1

School: Perelman School of Medicine

Organization: PA-Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center

Description:

We are seeking applications for postdoctoral researchers to work on any of the following areas:

1. Rare variant discovery in diverse, multi-ancestry datasets using genome-wide genotyping, whole-exome sequencing (WES), and whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data focusing on genome-wide association (GWA) analysis for identifying risk-increasing and protective variants for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), AD-Related Dementias (ADRDs) and other neurodegenerative diseases and disorders. This work will include developing and applying optimal analytic strategies accounting for global and local admixture in subjects of diverse ancestral backgrounds, and will benefit from experience with large datasets and cloud usage.

2. Algorithm development and analysis for quality control and association testing of whole-genome sequencing genotype data for AD, including processing and refining multi-allelic rare variant and X-chromosome variant data and identifying novel susceptibility loci for dementia

3. Identification of pleiotropic genetic associations in GWA analyses of AD and related neurodegenerative diseases with an emphasis on data management, analysis, development of novel bioinformatics tools and methodologies for analysis of this data, implementation of complex pipelines, and interpretation and presentation of analysis results. This work will also include extensive processing of WGS and WES data on Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, using data processing and analytical pipelines and cloud computing.

The activities of this position will include on data management, analysis, development and/or implementation of novel analytical strategies and bioinformatics tools for analysis of this data, the implementation of complex pipelines, and interpretation and presentation of analysis results at internal, consortium-wide, and national and international scientific meetings.

The postdoc(s) will collaborate closely with several groups including the Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics Consortium (ADGC), Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP), Genome Center for Alzheimer’s Disease (GCAD), Collaborative for Alzheimer’s Disease Research (CADRE), and NIA Genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease Data Storage Site (NIAGADS). They will be jointly mentored by participating faculty members from Pathology (Gerard Schellenberg, Alessandra Chesi), Genetics (Struan Grant), Biostatistics and Epidemiology (Mingyao Li), and Institute for Biomedical Informatics (Li-San Wang, Yuk Yee Fanny Leung) at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.

Qualifications:

Candidates will have a PhD in genetic epidemiology, statistical genetics, human genetics, and/or bioinformatics, and will have a strong academic record with first-author publications (published or in press) including genomic studies; publications in the area of neurodegeneration genetics are ideal but not a requirement. Technical skills desired for this position include experience with Linux and shell scripting; R statistical software and packages; commonly-used genomics tools, including PLINK, GATK, etc.; and familiarity with massively-parallelized analyses in high-performance computing clusters and AWS (cloud) computing. Candidates should work well with large analytical teams of diverse expertise.

Contact:

If you are interested, please send a cover letter, your CV, and your publication list to Debra Kalai ([email protected]).

Email: [email protected]