Mid-Career to Senior Principal Investigator

at  OICR

ABOUT OICR

OICR is Ontario’s cancer research institute. We bring together people from across the province and around the world to improve the lives of everyone affected by cancer. We take on the biggest challenges in cancer research and deliver real-world solutions to find cancer earlier and treat it more effectively. We are committed to helping people living with cancer, as well as future generations, live longer and healthier lives.
Launched in December 2005, OICR is an independent institute funded by the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

POSITION SUMMARY

The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is seeking a mid-career to senior Principal Investigator (PI) in Computational Biology to undertake world-class cancer research with a focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning. We seek to strengthen and complement our existing expertise in cancer genomics, statistical genetics, next-generation sequence analysis, biological knowledge bases and pathway/network analysis, to advance OICR’s strategic priorities on early cancer detection and interception. We welcome applications from computational biologists who have established international leadership in the application of machine learning to biomedical research challenges. Specific application areas of interest include, but are not limited to, digital histopathology, genomic variant effect prediction, drug target identification and the accurate prediction of genetic and chemical perturbations of biological pathways. We also welcome applications from individuals wishing to work collaboratively with OICR’s clinical partners to apply large language models to unstructured data from medical records, clinical trial protocols, and the scientific literature in order to achieve improvements in clinical decision making, clinical trial management, and patient support.
The PI will be expected to mentor trainees and early career investigators, to build collaborations both within and outside the OICR community, and to work with FACIT, OICR’s commercialization partner, to translate research findings into real-world products and services. In addition to base funds provided by the Institute to support the PI’s salary and core personnel, the PI is expected to raise additional research funds from external competitive granting agencies. OICR will assist the PI in obtaining a faculty appointment at the University of Toronto or another affiliated academic institution.
In the case of a successful senior candidate, OICR will provide opportunities to take on leadership responsibilities within the Computational Biology program. The incumbent will work with other senior leaders at OICR and make significant contributions to develop strategic research priorities and operational tactics.
Housed within OICR’s Adaptive Oncology theme, the Computational Biology Program provides a robust intellectual environment with multiple investigators working with technologies ranging from spatial ’omics to large language models of clinical records. An institutional cluster comprising ~9,000 CPU threads, and 18 GPU servers with a total of 36 NVIDIA CUDA cards as well as a large OpenStack virtualization environment, is available to support analysis by members of the Program. In addition, extensive compute resources, including large GPU clusters, are available to OICR faculty via Canada’s Digital Research Alliance.
OICR is a multi-disciplinary, team-science-driven translational research institute with PIs working in the areas of medical imaging instrumentation, robotics, drug design and development, biomarker discovery and assay development, spatial biology, and genomics. In addition to the facilities provided by the Computational Biology Program, the candidate will have access to a series of technology platforms for large-scale molecular data generation ranging from whole genome sequencing of challenging clinical specimens, to spatial transcriptomics and proteomics, cell-free DNA analysis, long-read sequencing, and digital histopathology. OICR develops and hosts multiple biobanks comprising hundreds of thousands of tissue and blood specimens, including the Ontario Health Study and the Ontario Tumour Bank. In addition, OICR develops and operates multiple data-rich biological databases including the international ICGC-ARGO Cancer Genome data platform, the Ontario Hereditary Cancer Research Network, and the Ontario node of the TFRI Marathon of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Centre Network. We are the host institution for the Global Alliance for Genomics in Health and a co-developer of the Pan-Canadian Genome Library. Finally, we believe in open-source and community development and are a signatory to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
Please visit https://oicr.on.ca/research-portfolio/ for details on our research portfolio.

POSITION REQUIREMENTS

• A PhD or MD with a proven track record in computational biology, bioinformatics, or biostatistics
• International recognition and a strong publication record of relevance, proven leadership and management experience including the building of strong research teams, as well as a strong record of grant-funding and mentorship
• Excellent communication and presentation skills

Please refer the Job description for details