About the position

We have one position available as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo, 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 Nordic collaborative project PreciMENT - Leveraging Nordic Opportunities to Transform Mental Health Care through Precision Medicine. The overall goal of the project is to transform our understanding of mental disorders by applying novel analytical tools to differences in genotypes and environment to predict disease trajectories. The project is part of a Nordic initiative in large scale healthcare data analysis for development of precision medicine approaches.

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).   

More about the position / Project description

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.

Your main tasks will be

• Develop and apply machine learning techniques and statistical analyses, including novel methodology for analysis of complex polygenic traits and prediction tools for precision psychiatry on longitudinal multimodal data, to fit and validate prediction models.  
• Perform quality control and imputation of genotype data from relevant datasets, including international and Norwegian samples. 
• Coordinate federated analytical and computational infrastructure across existing dataset and secure data storage systems. 
• Collaborate with clinicians and biologists for interpretation of the results and for practical implementation of the prediction/stratification tools.

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

Qualifications 

Required skills

• A PhD degree within statistical genetics, applied mathematics, computer science, medicine, psychology, molecular genetics, or similar.
• Advanced experience with statistical genetics.
  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). 
• A strong command of oral and written English. 
   

It is an advantage if you have

• Experience with cloud-based compute infrastructure (AWS/Azure/google cloud) and relevant tools (SQL/docker/Kubernetes).
• Background from the health care sector and experience from international multisite research collaborations. 
   

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.

Employment in the position is based on a comprehensive assessment of all qualification requirements applicable to the position, including personal qualifications.

We offer 

• Exciting and meaningful tasks in an organization with an important societal mission, contributing to knowledge development, education, and enlightenment that promote sustainable, fair, and knowledge-based societal development.
• A pleasant and stimulating work environment 
• Good welfare schemes.
• Opportunity of up to 1.5 hours a week of exercise during working hours.
• A workplace with good development and career opportunities. 
• Membership in the Statens Pensjonskasse, which is one of Norway's best pension schemes with beneficial mortgages and good insurance schemes.
• Salary in position as Postdoctoral Fellow, position code 1352 in salary range NOK 590 000 - 670 000, depending on competence and experience. From the salary, 2 percent is deducted in statutory contributions to the State Pension Fund.

Read more about the benefits of working in the public sector at Employer Portal.

Inclusive worklife and diversity at UiO

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.

We hope that you will apply for the position. 

More information about gender equality initiatives at UiO can be found here.

Application

Your application should include:

• Application letter.
• CV.
• A complete list of publications.
• Transcripts and certificates.
• Contact information for 2-3 references.

Application with attachments must be submitted via our recruitment system Jobbnorge, click "Apply for the position".

When applying for the position, we ask you to retrieve your education results from Vitnemålsportalen.no. If your education results are not available through Vitnemålsportalen, we ask you to upload copies of your transcripts or grades. Please note that all documentation must be in English or a Scandinavian language.

General information

The best qualified candidates will invited for interviews. 

Applicant lists can be published in accordance with Norwegian Freedom of Information Act § 25. When you apply for a position with us, your name will appear on the public applicant list. It is possible to request to be excluded from this list. You must justify why you want an exemption from publication and we will then decide whether we can grant your request. If we cannot, you will hear from us.

Please refer to Regulations for the Act on universities and colleges chapter 3 (Norwegian) and Guidelines concerning appointment to post doctoral and research posts at UiO (Norwegian).

The University of Oslo has a transfer agreement with all employees that is intended to secure the rights to all research results etc.