Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Precision Psychiatry - AgeCare project

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Job description

Applicants are invited for a 3 year position as Postdoctoral Fellowat the Centre for Precision Psychiatry, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo. 

Do you want to join our team as a postdoctoral fellow performing research highly relevant for the public health service? 

We have one position available as a postdoctoral fellow (SKO1352) at the University of Oslo - 3-years engagement – affiliated with the Centre for Precision Psychiatry at the Institute of Clinical Medicine.

We invite applications for a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship for an ambitious researcher with a relevant PhD to be part of the AgeCare project. The aim of the project is to enable the municipality health service to meet the increasing demand for early diagnosis of dementia and position the Norwegian healthcare sector for emerging treatment alternatives. A central part of the project is to develop and validate multimodal prediction algorithms for Alzheimer’s disease using genetics, neuroimaging, biomarkers, and results from cognitive tests. To achieve this goal, the researcher hired for this postdoctoral fellow position will work with the Centre’s datasets, analytical methodology, and computational tools, including state-of-the-art data storage and research infrastructure, hosted at the USIT TSD service (https://www.uio.no/english/services/it/research/sensitive-data/index.html).

The role of the Postdoctoral fellow will be to 

  1. Develop and apply machine learning techniques and statistical analyses, including Cox Proportional Hazard models and polygenic hazard scoring, to fit and validate prediction model. 
  2. Perform quality control and imputation of genotype data, as well as pre-processing of neuroimaging data from relevant datasets, including international and Norwegian samples. 
  3. Coordinate phenotype database of several dementia studies using REDCap, and to integrate existing dataset with ongoing data collection. 

Additionally, the Postdoctoral fellow will collaborate with clinicians and biologists for interpretation of the results and for practical implementation of the developed Alzheimer's disease prediction tools.

Our research environment is international, friendly and inspiring, and the position represents a unique opportunity for career development for a hard-working candidate. 


More about the position

The Centre for Precision Psychiatry is dedicated to research on severe mental and neuropsychiatric disorders. The Centre runs a series of multidisciplinary studies involving hospital departments in Oslo and several research groups at the University of Oslo. The main goal is to develop tools and knowledge for precision medicine in psychiatry, building on advanced statistical methods for analysis of large-scale human genetic and neuroimaging data, to better understand how biological, psychological, and environmental factors contribute to severe mental and neuropsychiatric disorders, their treatment, and outcomes. 

The Centre has access to a large database of biomarkers, clinical, and cognitive variables, genotyping and sequencing data, and MRI brain imaging data on patients with neuropsychiatric and severe mental disorders. In addition, we work closely with national population cohorts (Tromsø, HUSK, HUNT), and collaborate with Nordic partners to leverage the registry and biobank information across countries, as well as large international consortia, including the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) and the ENIGMA consortium.

For more information about the Centre, please visit our website:  https://www.med.uio.no/klinmed/english/research/groups/precision-psychiatry/ 

The Postdoctoral Fellow will work in a multidisciplinary team with clinicians as well as with experts in statistics, applied mathematics, big data analysis, and computer science. 

 

The main purpose of the fellowship is to qualify researchers for work in higher academic positions within their disciplines.


Qualification requirements

  • Applicants must hold a relevant PhD, preferably within statistical genetics, applied mathematics, computer science, medicine, psychology, molecular genetics or equivalent.
  • It is important with advanced experience with statistical genetics, programming skills and hands-on experience with high performance computing and big data analysis. 
  • Experience with handling of large-scale human genotype data (quality control, and polygenic analysis).
  • Skills in programming and scripting languages (Python/R/Matlab).
  • The ideal candidate has expertise in psychiatry, to be able to design the analyses to target relevant clinical questions. Expertise and experience in clinical psychiatry is therefore an advantage.
  • Background from the health care sector and experience from international multisite research collaborations can also be useful. 
  • A strong command of oral and written English is required. 

Personal skills

  • Well organized with high working capacity and productivity
  • Excellent team working skills, and ability to work in a multidisciplinary team of researchers
  • Strong motivation and a genuine interest in applying analytical methodology and tools for precision medicine in psychiatry.

We offer

  • salary NOK 575 400 – NOK 657 300 per annum depending on qualifications in position as Postdoctoral Research Fellow (position code 1352)
  • a professionally stimulating working environment
  • attractive welfare benefits and a generous pension agreement, in addition to Oslo’s family-friendly environment with its rich opportunities for culture and outdoor activities

How to apply

The application must include

  • cover letter (statement of motivation, summarizing scientific work and research interest)
  • CV (summarizing education, positions, pedagogical experience, administrative experience and other qualifying activity)
  • copies of educational certificates (academic transcripts only)
  • a complete list of publications
  • list of reference persons: 2-3 references (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and phone number)

The application with attachments must be delivered in our electronic recruiting system. Foreign applicants are advised to attach an explanation of their University's grading system. Please note that all documents should be in English (or a Scandinavian language).

In assessing the applications, special emphasis will be placed on the documented, academic qualifications, the project description (whenever this is required in the call for applicants), and the quality of the project as well as the candidates motivation and personal suitability. Interviews with the best qualified candidates will be arranged.


It is expected that the successful candidate will be able to complete the project in the course of the period of employment.


Formal regulations

Please see the guidelines and regulations for appointments to Postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oslo.

No one can be appointed for more than one Postdoctoral Fellow period at the University of Oslo.

According to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure.

Inclusion and diversity are a strength. The University of Oslo has a personnel policy objective of achieving a balanced gender composition. Furthermore, we want employees with diverse professional expertise, life experience and perspectives.

If there are qualified applicants with disabilities, employment gaps or immigrant background, we will invite at least one applicant from each of these categories to an interview.