Senior Researcher: Bioinformatics (Post Level 7) at Stellenbosch University

Duties/Pligte

• Leading independent bioinformatics, computational biology, or genomic epidemiology research projects.
• Publishing high-quality research articles in reputable, peer-reviewed journals.
• Developing new analytical methods, pipelines, or computational models.
• Identifying emerging scientific questions and proposing innovative solutions.
• Preparing and submitting competitive research grant proposals to national and international funders.
• Securing funding to support group activities, students, and project expansion.
• Maintaining a strong publication record aligned with Stellenbosch University's expectations.
• Building and maintaining computational workflows for genomic analysis (e.g., phylogenetics, variant calling, functional analysis).
• Contributing to open-source tools, databases, or software packages.
• Improving scalability, reproducibility, and automation of analysis pipelines.
• Presenting research at national and international conferences, workshops, and symposia.
• Representing the institution in scientific networks, consortiums, and forums.
• Contributing to science communication, policy briefs, and stakeholder engagement where appropriate.
• Identifying new research directions aligned with institutional strategic priorities.
• Contributing to the development of institutional or national bioinformatics research agendas.
• Delivering lectures, seminars, or workshops in bioinformatics, computational biology, genomics, or related modules.
• Contributing to postgraduate teaching (Honours, MSc, PhD) through specialised content delivery.
• Developing and presenting short courses and advanced training sessions for internal and external participants.
• Designing or updating course content, including lecture materials, assessments, and practicals.
• Developing new modules aligned with emerging trends (e.g., machine learning in genomics, data science for health).
• Ensuring curriculum relevance to local and global bioinformatics needs.
• Producing technical reports, preprints, conference papers, and datasets.
• Supervising postgraduate students (Honours, MSc, PhD) and postdoctoral fellows.
• Providing mentorship on research design, computational methods, and scientific writing.
• Guiding junior researchers in developing independence and technical expertise.

Job Requirements/Pos Vereistes

• PhD in molecular biology, genetics or a related field (e.g., bioinformatics or biological sciences with emphasis on transcriptomics and human genomics).
• At least five years' post-PhD experience in the field of bioinformatics.
• Proven ability to teach bioinformatics courses effectively at postgraduate level.
• Experience supervising postgraduate students up to and including PhD level.
• A record of peer-reviewed publications in top-tier journals related to bioinformatics or biomedical research.
• Experience working with researchers from diverse backgrounds (biology, computer science, statistics).
• Proven experience in processing and analysing Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) high throughput data.
• Proficiency in at least three programming languages such as Python, R, Bash, Perl or C/C++, C#, Ruby, and/or Java.
• Data analysis skills: good background in statistical analysis techniques relevant to biological data interpretation.
• Technical skills: advanced experience with work and setup of computational clusters and servers.
• Demonstrable high-level proficiency in software development and programming.
• In-depth understanding of molecular biology, genetics, transcriptomics, and genomics, particularly human genomics and gene expression analysis.
• Comprehensive knowledge of bioinformatics algorithms, workflows, and software for sequence alignment, variant calling, functional annotation, and data visualisation.
• Deep knowledge of programming principles, software development practices, and version control.
• Knowledge of computational infrastructure, cluster management, and workflow automation.
• Familiarity with grant proposal development, project management, and collaboration in multidisciplinary research environments.

Closing Date 22-Dec-2025