Postdoctoral researcher in Statistical Phylogenetics

The Swedish Museum of Natural History (http://www.nrm.se) is one of the leading institutions of its kind in Europe. It combines a venerable tradition and unique collections with cutting-edge research in geology, paleontology and biology. The research at the Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics focuses on computational phylogenetics, population genetics and genomics. More information is available at:
www.nrm.se/en/forskningochsamlingar/bioinformatikochgenetik.9000580.html

The Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics is looking to fill a position as postdoctoral researcher in statistical phylogenetics. The advertised position is for two years. The postdoc will be based in Fredrik Ronquist´s research group (https://ronquistlab.github.io). The position is funded by a Swedish Research Council grant to develop better analytical tools for hard problems in statistical phylogenetics and phylogenomics. The project is a collaboration involving the Swedish Museum of Natural History, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Uppsala University and Uber AI. In a related project, Kew Gardens and the University of Gothenburg are also involved.


WORK TASKS
The postdoc will be a key player in developing new modeling and inference tools based on universal probabilistic programming, an approach that has attracted considerable attention across scientific disciplines in recent years. Specifically, we will be developing a domain-specific language to describe phylogenetics problems, and design new inference strategies for such model descriptions. The goal is to successfully tackle some of the most challenging research problems in statistical phylogenetics and phylogenomics. For some early success stories, see our recent manuscript on bioRxiv: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.16.154443. The postdoc will be encouraged to develop new projects, apply for third-party funding, supervise students and lecture at courses.


QUALIFICATIONS
The ideal candidate is a creative and independent researcher with a PhD degree in biology, statistics, computer science or another relevant field. Depending on when the candidate defended his/her PhD thesis, the official employment will either be as a postdoc or researcher. The candidate should be familiar with biological research problems, be comfortable with mathematical and statistical reasoning, and have solid computational and programming skills. Documented scientific achievement in computational biology or a related field is essential, as are excellent communication skills in English. We will pay particular attention to scientific talent and potential.

OTHER
The Swedish Museum of Natural History strives for gender balance, and ethnic and cultural diversity among its staff.