PhD fellowship in Prediction and Transfer Learning of Multi-omics Traits across Genetic Cohorts at Novo Nordisk Found...

We are offering a PhD fellowship in “Prediction and Transfer Learning of Multi-omics Traits across Genetic Cohorts” commencing January 1, 2024, or after agreement.

About CBMR
Our researchers share a common purpose as they seek to transform the basic understanding of the mechanisms involved in metabolic health and disease, and to accelerate this knowledge towards new prevention and treatment strategies.

The Center has around 260 employees, consisting of 22 research groups and 5 technology platforms, who work in a vibrant international research environment with a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Center’s research has resulted in seminal discoveries as to how genes, hormones, and environmental factors influence metabolic health and disease throughout life. You may read more about us at www.cbmr.ku.dk.

The Rasmussen Group
To solve fundamental biological questions related to human health and disease it has become apparent that we must study them from multiple angles using multi-omics and multi-modal data. This is especially important for complex phenotypes such as cardio metabolic diseases. Specifically, the Rasmussen Group focuses on analysis of multi-omics data such as genomics, proteomics, microbiome data, clinical records, and electronic health data. By bringing all this information together we want to translate biological and medical knowledge to the clinic.

More information about the Rasmussen Group can be found here.

Project description
Large genetic cohorts made it possible to identify thousands of disease-causing genetic variants. Complex diseases can have many associated variants and are therefore difficult to functionally investigate. To understand the mechanism how genetic variants cause complex diseases, it is important to shed light on their functional implications on physiological traits like protein or metabolite abundances. Our group has developed state-of-the-art Deep Learning (DL) methods to integrate multi-omics data such as genomics, proteomics and metabolomics. The PhD student will apply DL to multi-omics data from large-scale, population-based cohorts to decode how genomic variation influences physiological traits.

The PhD student will work with the DL framework EIR and use data from the UK Biobank to investigate non-linear interactions of genomic variants and how they affect the blood plasma proteome and metabolome. Additionally, the PhD student will transfer pre-trained models from the UK Biobank to other genetic cohorts to improve disease prediction. The project aims to deepen our understanding of the mechanism of cardio metabolic diseases and will provide fundamental knowledge of the genome-proteome and genome-metabolome relationships.

Principal supervisor is Associate Professor Simon Rasmussen, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, E-mail: [email protected].

Start: January 1, 2024, or after agreement
Duration: 3 years as a PhD student

Job description
Your key tasks as a PhD student at SUND are:

• Carry through an independent research project under supervision
• Complete PhD courses or other equivalent education corresponding to approx. 30 ECTS points
• Participate in active research environments including a stay at another research team
• Obtain experience with teaching or other types of dissemination related to your PhD project
• Teach and disseminate your knowledge
• Write a PhD thesis on the grounds of your project

Key criteria for the assessment of applicants
Applicants must have qualifications corresponding to a master’s degree related to the subject area of the project, e.g. bioinformatics, biology or biomedicine. Please note that your master’s degree must be equivalent to a Danish master’s degree (two years). Experience in computational biology, especially computational proteomics and expertise in multi-omics data integration is advantageous.

Other important criteria are:

• The grade point average achieved
• Professional qualifications relevant to the PhD project
• Relevant work experience
• Other professional activities
• A curious mind-set with a strong interest in multi-modal data integration and deep learning
• Demonstrated scientific productivity, such as previous research publications
• Excellent written and spoken English language skills

Place of employment
The place of employment is at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. We offer creative and stimulating working conditions in dynamic and international research environment. Our research facilities include modern laboratories, bioinformatics and statistic guidance, and access to big data from multiple cohorts.

Terms of employment
The employment as PhD fellow is full time and for 3 years. The starting date is January 1, 2024, or after agreement.

It is conditioned upon the applicant’s success­ful enrolment as a PhD student at the Graduate School at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. This requires submission and acceptance of an application for the specific project formulated by the applicant.

The PhD study must be completed in accordance with The Ministerial Order on the PhD programme (2013) and the Faculty’s rules on achieving the degree.

Salary, pension and terms of employment are in accordance with the agree­ment between the Ministry of Finance and The Danish Confederation of Professional Associations on Academics in the State. Depending on seniority, the monthly salary begins around 28.990 DKK /approx. 3.888 EUR (October 2023 level) plus pension.

Questions
For specific information about the PhD fellowship, please contact the principal supervisor.

General information about PhD study at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences is available at the Graduate School’s website: https://healthsciences.ku.dk/phd/guidelines/.

Application procedure
Your application must be submitted electronically by clicking ‘Apply now’ below. The application must include the following documents in PDF format:

1. Motivated letter of application (max. one page)

2. CV incl. education, experience, language skills and other skills relevant for the position

3. Master of Science diploma and transcript of records. If not completed, a certified/signed copy of a recent transcript of records or a written statement from the institution or supervisor will do. As a prerequisite for a PhD fellowship employment, your master’s degree must be equivalent to a Danish master’s degree. We encourage you to read more in the assessment database: https://ufm.dk/en/education/recognition-and-transparency/find-assessments/assessment -database. Please note that we might ask you to obtain an assessment of your education performed by the Ministry of Higher Education and Science.

4. Publication list (if possible)

Application deadline: 25 October 2023, 23.59pm CET

We reserve the right not to consider material received after the deadline, and not to consider applications that do not live up to the abovementioned requirements.

The further process
After the expiry of the deadline for applications, the authorized recruitment manager selects applicants for assessment on the advice of the hiring committee. All applicants are then immediately notified whether their application has been passed for assessment by an unbiased assessor.

The assessor makes a non-prioritized assessment of the academic qualifications and experience with respect to the above-mentioned area of research, techniques, skills and other requirements listed in the advertisement.

Once the assessment work has been completed each applicant has the opportunity to comment on the part of the assessment that relates to the applicant him/herself.

You can read about the recruitment process at http://employment.ku.dk/faculty/recruitment-process/

The applicant will be assessed according to the Ministerial Order no. 242 of 13 March 2012 on the Appointment of Academic Staff at Universities.

The University of Copenhagen wishes to reflect the diversity of society and welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of personal background.

Kilde: Jobnet.dk