Postdoc in Single Cell Genomics, Jens Hjerling-Leffler group, Karolinska Institutet

Do you want to contribute to top quality medical research?

The position is located within The Division of Molecular Neurobiology in the lab of Professor Jens Hjerling-Leffler at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics (MBB), Karolinska Institutet.

The Hjerling-Leffler lab aims at understanding how adolescent development of the nervous system, on a cell type-specific level, influences the etiology of psychiatric disorders. We work with several different approaches including analysis of postmortem samples and mouse models of genetic risk to understand biological convergence. We also combine transcriptomic data with large scale human genetics to investigate the cellular consequences of polygenic heritability in Schizophrenia (SCZ).

Our lab fosters a creative, friendly, and inclusive work environment with the goal for all lab members to answer exciting scientific questions while fulfilling personal career ambition.

Your mission

We seek a skilled bioinformatician or computational biologist with experience in next-generation sequencing data processing, analysis and visualization (RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, single cell data or similar). The ideal candidate is passionate about answering biological questions related to how genetic risk for schizophrenia affects different cell types and their functional maturation. The successful candidate will lead projects involving the analysis of large spatial transcriptomics and single-nuclei RNA-seq data sets from mouse models and human subjects. The candidate will work closely with experimental researchers and technical personnel in the team and collaborators in international consortia. He/she will be responsible for data analysis, visualization and development of new computational methods for processing and analysis of high dimensional large-scale omics data.

Your profile

To be eligible for employment as a postdoctor, a PhD or a foreign degree deemed to be equivalent to a Swedish PhD is required. This eligibility requirement must be fulfilled at the latest at the time of the employment decision. Completion of your doctoral degree within the last three years is considered an advantage. If there are special reasons, your degree may have been completed earlier.

We welcome applications from candidates with pure computational background as well as those wishing to combine experimental and theoretical approaches.

Qualifications

• PhD degree in relevant fields (bioinformatics, genetics, neuroscience, computational biology, mathematics, and/or statistics).
• Strong programming skills in R and/or Python
• Demonstrated strong ability in analyzing high-dimensional data.
• Demonstrated ability to present and analyze results orally and in writing
• Documented scientific publications in relevant fields
• Curiosity to solve fundamental biological questions and enthusiasm to lead new independent projects.
• Ability to formalize a biological question into a computational model.
• Proficiency in written and spoken English

It is meritorious that the applicant has

• Prior involvement in interdisciplinary projects combining computational and biological sciences.
• Knowledge of LINUX/UNIX command line and terminal
• Strong understanding of statistics and machine learning for high-dimensional data (strong merit)
• Experience analyzing spatial transcriptomics data (e.g. 10x Visium, image-based) and NGS (10x platform, Smart-Seq) or other high-throughput/dimensionality methods.
• Publicly available code (e.g. GitHub)

What do we offer?

A creative and inspiring environment with wide-ranging expertise and interests. Karolinska Institutet is one of the world's leading medical universities. At Karolinska Institutet, we conduct successful medical research and hold the largest range of medical education in Sweden. At KI, you get to meet researchers working with a wide range of specialisms and methods, giving you ample opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience with the various scientific fields within medicine and health. It is the crossover collaborations, which have pushed KI to where it is today, at the forefront of global research. Several of the people you meet in healthcare are educated at KI. A close relationship with the health care providers is important for creating groundbreaking top quality education and research. Karolinska Institutet is also a state university, which entitles you to several benefits through our collective agreement.

Location: Solna, Biomedicum

Application

An employment application must contain the following documents in English or Swedish:

• PhD certificate
• A complete resumé, including date of the thesis defence, title of the thesis, previous academic positions, academic title, current position, academic distinctions, and committee work
• A complete list of publications
• A summary of current work (no more than one page)

Welcome to apply at the latest 2025-06-18

The application is to be submitted through the Varbi recruitment system.

Want to make a difference? Join us and contribute to better health for all!