Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center is an independent, nonprofit, unified adult cancer care and research center that is clinically integrated with UW Medicine, a world leader in clinical care, research and learning. The first National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in the Pacific Northwest, Fred Hutch’s global leadership in bone marrow transplantation, HIV/AIDS prevention, immunotherapy, and COVID-19 vaccines has confirmed our reputation as one of the world’s leading cancer, infectious disease and biomedical research centers. Based in Seattle, Fred Hutch operates eight clinical care sites that provide medical oncology, infusion, radiation, proton therapy, and related services, and network affiliations with hospitals in five states. Together, our fully integrated research and clinical care teams seek to discover new cures to the world’s deadliest diseases and make life beyond cancer a reality.
At Fred Hutch, we believe that the innovation, collaboration, and rigor that result from diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission of eliminating cancer and related diseases. We seek employees who bring different and innovative ways of seeing the world and solving problems. Fred Hutch is in pursuit of becoming an antiracist organization. We are committed to ensuring that all candidates hired share our commitment to diversity, antiracism, and inclusion.
Matsen Lab EnvironmentThe environment in the Matsen group is lively yet casual, with a strong emphasis on collaborative work between postdocs, PhD students, interns, and programmers.
The Center is housed in a lovely campus on Lake Union a short walk from downtown, and a slightly longer walk from the University of Washington. The Matsen group is in the newly-remodeled Steam Plant building overlooking the lake. We believe that science is for everyone. We have had researchers with a variety of backgrounds, including Latinx, Black, Asian, and Middle Eastern. We have had women, men, gay, and straight, and we welcome people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. We have had successful high schoolers, postdocs, people who were the first in their family to attend college, and one who had decided that college wasn’t for them. We have had researchers with backgrounds in biology, physics, statistics, math, and computer science.
We acknowledge the historical and present barriers for underrepresented groups, and work to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in computational biology. Members of underrepresented groups are especially encouraged to apply.
Please read our expectations of group members. By applying for this position, we expect that you will fulfill these expectations. We enthusiastically solicit feedback on these expectations or requests for clarification.
During the next few years we expect SARS-CoV-2 to continue its transformation into an endemic virus, as vaccines mitigate but do not eliminate its circulation. In many ways we expect SARS-CoV-2 to become analogous to flu, where yearly vaccinations are designed to be as effective as possible against the most important circulating strains. However, because of the time required to manufacture and then administer the vaccine, we must decide months ahead of time what the most important strains are to include.
The purpose of this position is to develop algorithms to forecast the dominant viral variants given a diverse collection of densely sampled data. In addition to epidemiological data, we will have experimentally-derived estimates of the phenotype of large pools of spike variants, both in terms of their function and their ability to escape antibody-mediated immune pressure. Using machine-learning techniques we will predict the fitness of additional combinations of mutations alongside experimentally inferred phenotypes, and use these predictions as part of our overall system to predict the long-term trajectory of viral variants. This will be a close collaboration with the Bedford and Bloom labs.
We are seeking a postdoc to develop predictive algorithms and help bring them into production on nextstrain.org. This includes:
This position will be housed in the Matsen lab; see our website for more information about what we do.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:If you are interested in this position, please submit the following materials:
Fred Hutch has a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine requirement, with exceptions only for approved medical or religious accommodations. As a condition of employment, newly hired employees must provide proof of vaccination or initiate the accommodations process before their first day of employment.
A statement describing your commitment and contributions toward greater diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism in your career or that will be made through your work at Fred Hutch is requested of all finalists.
