# Internal postdoc opportunities in biomedical data science training at UC Davis

We seek _current_ postdocs (or graduating PhD students) at UC Davis to join a small team of staff and researchers to do training and engagement as part of the [NIH Common Fund Data Ecosystem (CFDE)](http://nih-cfde.org/).

This opportunity may be of particular interest to postdocs who are seeking industry positions in biotech and would like hands-on experience and training in online training, asynchronous projects, GitHub-based material development, workflow execution, and cloud computing.

Unfortunately this opportunity is limited to those who are already employed at UC Davis but whose funding is expiring. Applicants must be eligible for an extension to their postdoc position; we can also potentially hire newly graduated PhDs and PhD students on filing fee. Please contact us if you are interested.

## Details

The NIH CFDE Training and Engagement Team runs a number of hands-on training workshops; you can see our current set of materials [here](https://training.nih-cfde.org/en/latest/) and [here](https://ngs-docs.github.io/2021-august-remote-computing/). We are interested in recruiting postdocs to help in delivering, evaluating, maintaining, and extending these lessons. In return, we will train you in a variety of computational techniques and project management approaches!

The supervisor/PI is C. Titus Brown.

### Position information

- The position can start at any time, but preferably before January 31, 2022.
- Your initial appointment will be only until 4/30/22, although extensions are possible, given funding.
- Part time work (50%) is available, but we prefer 80% -100% effort.
- Remote work is fine! This can be an entirely online position.
- You must be a currently employed postdoc at UC Davis, with interest in extending or supplementing funding. In particular, you must have a total of less than 5 years of postdoc experience.
- Please ensure you have the support of your current supervisor!
- We can consider "Gap Funding" for newly graduated PhD students, and may be able to hire graduate students on filing fee. (We cannot cover any tuition costs, I'm afraid.)

### Applicant scientific interests/Background

- Applicants should have interest in and/or willingness to engage with molecular biology data types and biomedical data science techniques, but **prior biology knowledge is not required**.
- Applicants should have interest in or experience with teaching and training. We use "Carpentries"-style hands-on teaching techniques.
- Specific experience with databases, ontologies, statistics, and bioinformatics is very welcome (and will be put to use :) but is **not necessary**.

### Applicant technical background:

Applicants should have some experience in some (but not necessarily all) of the following:

- document writing via Markdown and/or google docs
- Synchronous project management and collaboration via slack
- Basic remote computing (shell, text files, ssh, git/github)
- Python+Jupyter and/or R+RStudio

### What applicants will learn

Applicants will gain experience in:

- Asynch project management via github
- Workflows with snakemake
- Cloud computing on AWS and GCP
- Markdown-to-HTML web site construction, rendering and customization
- Software install with conda
- Protected health information data access and work considerations, especially in the cloud

### Applicant position duties

Your position duties will include some or all of:

- Maintainance and curation of existing training materials
- Delivering materials as part of a team: TA and helper activities, and potential to lead workshops
- Creating, delivering, and summarizing assessments
- Attending meetings to brainstorm and/or refine new training materials
- Testing and evaluating cloud infrastructure and web-based workbenches for biomedical data analysis
- Documentation and issue tracking for workbench integration problems (connecting data and workflows between platforms)

## Information on host lab

This position is with [Dr. C. Titus Brown](http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/) in the [Lab for Data Intensive Biology](http://ivory.idyll.org/lab/), where we focus on [doing good data analysis](http://ivory.idyll.org/lab/philosophy.html). The lab is a friendly, collaborative place, with an [inclusive culture and a strong Code of Conduct](http://ivory.idyll.org/lab/coc.html).

### Why do you mention transition to industry?

We find that industry seems to value the techniques and technology that we teach and train, and many DIB Lab alumni have gone into industry. We are happy to support lab members in any career path of interest!

## Interested?

Please drop Titus Brown [e-mail] and Amanda Charbonneau [e-mail] an e-mail with your current CV and a one-paragraph description of your interests. Please make sure to include your current position information and your earliest potential start date. Please include the words "CFDE postdoc enquiry" in your e-mail subject line.