Mots-Clés

bioinformatics chemoinformatics machine learning medicinal chemistry virtual screening

Description

Project

This position will investigate the application of a range of supervised learning techniques, representations and data augmentation strategies to the discovery of bioactive molecules in ultra-large libraries for selected therapeutic targets. The project will exploit large volumes of protein structure data, including recently available Alphafold2 structures.

Selection criteria - Essential
• A PhD awarded in an area relevant to the project.

• Expertise in the application of supervised learning algorithms to scientific problems.

• An excellent first and/or master degree with a major focus on computational analysis of experimental data.

• Skilled in the implementation of R or Python scripts for scientific data analysis.

• Ability to communicate effectively in English, both orally and in writing.

• First-author publications in international journals.

Selection criteria - Desirable

• Previous training/research on molecular docking techniques, drug discovery informatics and/or structural bioinformatics.

• Research projects in the application of supervised learning to solve real-world problems in the context of biomedical research, especially virtual screening.

• Prior use of high-performance computing to train supervised learning algorithms.

Working environment

The Cancer Research Center of Marseille (CRCM) is an INSERM centre (https://www.inserm.fr/en/about-us/inserm-at-a-glance/). The CRCM is also affiliated to the private cancer hospital Institut Paoli Calmettes, the CNRS and Aix-Marseille University. The 400+ researchers working at the CRCM form a strongly multi-disciplinary research environment (https://www.crcm-marseille.fr/).

What we offer

The successful candidate will have a 3-year contract with a gross monthly salary of up to €2,900 gross monthly (depending on experience). This is an exciting opportunity for a motivated scientist wishing to work on a timely and exciting data science problem of great therapeutic importance. Selected predictions made by the developed methods will be experimentally validated by our collaborators, thus the postdoc will be also part of the resulting patents. The postdoc will join the Ballester team at the CRCM, which provides an international and stimulating research environment. The team is composed by 3 postdocs and 5 PhD students, working on the application of machine learning to drug design and precision oncology problems. In terms of quality of life, the CRCM is located in Marseille, thus the student will enjoy living in an exciting multi-cultural city right by the French Mediterranean coast (https://www.marseille-tourisme.com/en/).