Acknowledgement of Country

CSIRO acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land, sea and waters, of the area that we live and work on across Australia. We acknowledge their continuing connection to their culture and pay our respects to their Elders past and present. View our vision towards reconciliation

The Opportunity

• Do you have a PhD in biostatistics, statistics, mathematics, epidemiology, computer science or a related discipline?
• Keen to use cutting-edge precision medicine technology?
• Be part of an award-winning team for this important 3-year postdoctoral role

CSIRO Early Research Career (CERC) Postdoctoral Fellowships provide opportunities to scientists and engineers who have completed their doctorate and have less than three years of relevant postdoctoral work experience. These fellowships aim to develop the next generation of future leaders of the innovation system.

The CERC Fellow will be part of the award-winning Molecular Diagnostics Solutions Team who have successfully developed and commercialised diagnostic tests for colorectal cancer. The team is currently developing novel diagnostic approaches and ex vivo technologies for cancer, metabolic disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and acute brain trauma.

Across this CERC Fellowship you will work on the development of a blood test useful for diagnosing tissue/organ damage. This cutting-edge precision medicine technology makes use of DNA sequencing to inspect DNA fragments in the bloodstream released from dying cells.

The CERC Fellow will be part of a project team consisting of molecular biologists, bioinformaticians, statisticians, and clinicians. Your role will be to lead the development of the key classifier algorithm in this project, with a lot of scope for creativity and problem solving. Emerging solutions in this space use dimension reduction techniques for feature selection and probabilistic modelling for the classifier (including Markov chains, maximum likelihood estimation, and Bayesian inference).

Your duties will include:

• Utilising analytical skills as a biostatistician for biomarker and classifier development for a liquid biopsy test.
• Engaging with clinical collaborators to understand unmet diagnostic needs and exemplify the classification method in several proof-of principle clinical areas.
• Working with a project team to architect and build software for processing sequencing data in real-time.
• Carrying out innovative, impactful research of strategic importance to CSIRO that will, where possible, lead to novel and important scientific outcomes. 

Location: Westmead, Sydney, NSW
Salary: AU$92k - AU$101k plus up to 15.4% superannuation
Tenure: Specified term of 3 years
Reference: 90828

To be considered you will need:

• A doctorate (or will shortly satisfy the requirements of a PhD) in a relevant discipline area, such as biostatistics, statistics, mathematics, epidemiology, computer science or a related discipline. Please note: To be eligible for this role you must have no more than 3 years (or full-time equivalent) of postdoctoral research experience.
• Demonstrated experience designing, applying, and interpreting statistical learning or machine learning based classifiers in the field of health or medicine.
• Experience in dimensionality reduction, feature selection, and probabilistic methods.
• Extensive experience in modern coding languages for statistical computing (R, Python, Julia preferred), including libraries relevant for biostatistics and machine learning, such as Bioconductor or scikit-learn.

For full details about this role please view the Position Description

Eligibility

Appointment to this role is subject to provision of a national police check and may be subject to other security/medical/character requirements.

Flexible Working Arrangements

We work flexibly at CSIRO, offering a range of options for how, when and where you work. 

Diversity and Inclusion

We are working hard to recruit people representing the diversity across our society, and ensure that all our people feel supported to do their best work and feel empowered to let their ideas flourish. 

About CSIRO

At CSIRO Australia's national science agency, we solve the greatest challenges through innovative science and technology. We put the safety and wellbeing of our people above all else and earn trust everywhere because we only deal in facts. We collaborate widely and generously and deliver solutions with real impact. 

Join us and start creating tomorrow today!

How to Apply

Please apply on-line and provide a cover letter and CV that best demonstrate your motivation and ability to meet the requirements of this role.

Applications Close

16 April 2023, 11:00pm AEST