Bioinformatician Research Officer – PrePOP Project

Job title:

Bioinformatician Research Officer – PrePOP Project

Company:

Teagasc

Job description

Job DescriptionDuration:Temporary externally funded non Grant-in-Aid contract post, the indicative duration of which is 17months, subject to contract. A panel may be formed from which future similar vacancies may be filled; such a panel will remain active for a maximum period of 12 months.Basic Function:Teagasc seeks to recruit a Research Officer to a Research Ireland funded position. The successful candidate will have experience in the analysis of shotgun microbiome data, including generating taxonomic, functional and diversity related outputs using assembly-based and assembly-free approaches. The successful applicant will also need to correlate this data with other omics and meta-data.Background:Research Ireland has funded the project entitled “PREterm birth Prevention with Oral Probiotics: A Double-Blinded Placebo Controlled Randomized Controlled Trial on Lactobacillus-crispatus-Containing Probiotic Therapy in Women at Risk of Preterm Birth (The PrePOP Study)”. PrePOP is led by University College Dublin through Professor Fionnuala McAuliffe in collaboration with Teagasc and Imperial College London, with input from collaborators at the University of Glasgow and University of Adelaide. The Teagasc component of the project, led by Prof Paul Cotter, is focused on the analysis of microbiome data, generated through shotgun metagenomic sequencing. Teagasc are recruiting a bioinformatican to lead this analysis. The McAuliffe and Cotter teams have worked together over several years to study the microbiomes of mothers and infants, most notably through the MicrobeMom consortium, leading to several impactful papers and findings.Job Objectives

• Characterise the microbial communities in the maternal vagina and gut samples using shotgun metagenomics sequencing
• Identify changes in community composition, functional potential and diversity
• Characterise the abundance of Lactobacillus crispatus and the diversity of other Lactobacillus strains in the vaginal microbiome
• Perform strain tracking of the administered probiotic
• To assist Teagasc in meeting the commitments of the Quality Customer Service Charter and Action Plan.
• To actively participate in the annual business planning and Performance Management Development System (PMDS) processes.
• Fully co-operate with the provisions made for ensuring the health, safety and welfare of themselves, fellow staff and non-Teagasc staff and co-operate with management in enabling Teagasc to comply with legal obligations. This includes full compliance with the responsibilities outlined in the Safety Statement.
• Any other duties as may be assigned from time to time

• This job specification is intended as a guide to the general range of duties and is intended to be neither definitive nor restrictive. It will be reviewed from time to time with the post holder.

Skills RequirementEssentialDesirableQualifications

• An honours Level 8 degree, (as recognised on the

or ), in Bioinformatics, Molecular Biology, Microbiology or a related discipline.

• A postgraduate degree and/or research experience in Bioinformatics, Molecular Biology, Microbiology or related field would be a distinct advantage

Skills/Knowledge

• Demonstrated research and technical expertise in analysis of shotgun metagenomic data
• Evidence of research activity (publications, conference presentations, awards) and future scholarly output (working papers, research proposals etc)
• Excellent project management, analytical, report writing and data analysis skills.

• Experience in setting own research agenda.
• Evidence of teamwork and collaboration with relevant partners.

Behavioural Competencies

• An ability to collaborate with team members and PhD students to help build research knowledge and skill and to guide professional development.
• Commitment to teamwork and collaborating with colleagues as per our Teagasc Together ethos.
• Excellent communication skills (oral, written, presentation) with an ability to enable effective knowledge and technology transfer.
• Ability to generate new ideas, unique concepts, models and solutions.

Eligibility This is an open public competition. Should a current serving Teagasc staff member be successful in their application through open public competition for this post, their current contract of employment with Teagasc will come to an end on taking up this post.Note: The ‘essential’ qualifications, knowledge, skills and behavioural competencies outlined above are ‘must-have’ which will be used in the selection process.

Expected salary

€41580 – 78830 per year

Location

Fermoy, Co Cork

Job date

Wed, 14 May 2025 07:45:22 GMT

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