Postdoctoral Researcher for Data Science in Spinal Cord Injury

The Biomedical Data Science (BMDS) Lab investigates data-driven solutions for healthcare applications with a focus on neurological conditions such as spinal cord injury (SCI), lower back pain, neuro-degenerative disorders and neurological tumors. At the core of our research is the collaboration across disciplines spanning expertise in medicine, biology, computer and data science. We are seeking a motivated postdoc to join this growing team and contribute to interdisciplinary research partnerships.

Traumatic SCI has strong and life-long implications on affected patients and their families. A major problem of contemporary drug development for traumatic SCI is the high failure rate in clinical trials despite promising preclinical evidence. A possible contribution for this may be the assumption that SCI can be targeted without accounting for substantial variability in individual biological, clinical, health, and injury-related characteristics. A uniform physiological recovery capacity and consistent benefits from the experimental drug are assumed, contradicting the conventional understanding of natural recovery prognosis. We hypothesize that conventional outcome and SCI severity assessment metrics mask the true treatment-induced recovery improvements implying that better alternative solutions for this question are needed. The aim of this postdoctoral position is to investigate alternative quantification metrics for SCI from a data-driven perspective. 

The postdoctoral researcher will

• Familiarize themselves with the various international databases collecting data on SCI patients. These data are readily available at the start of this project
• Lead the implementation, training and benchmark of state-of-the-art data science pipelines to characterize the landscape of SCI recovery trajectories and injury patterns
• Run simulations based on a mechanistic understanding of the clinical hallmarks of traumatic SCI leading to the development of novel quantification metrics of injury severity and recovery
• Communicate with clinical experts regarding the requirements for an online recovery exploration platform and the design and evaluation of clinical trials in the context of traumatic SCI
• Support junior researchers in the team and be part of an engaging and collaborative team

• You have a PhD in a relevant field such as data science, computer science, physics and/or biomedical research
• You are proficient in Python programming with good knowledge of the implementation of machine and deep learning models through Keras/Tensorfow and/or PyTorch
• You have experience in software development including collaborative coding, version control and use of compute clusters
• You ideally have a background in biomedical projects with experience in interdisciplinary collaboration - background in the context of SCI related research is a plus
• You are motivated to inclusively work as part of a diverse team
• You strive towards scientific excellence in your field by driving innovation
• You are proficient in English in writing and speaking
• You are seeking to strive for scientific excellence and are curious to learn as part of a multidisciplinary project

We offer a 2-year project-based contract at the BMDS lab working in the SCI team that includes: 

• Opportunities to engage with different communities bridging data science and SCI research leading to high impact publications
• You will be part of a highly motivated, multidisciplinary and collaborative team
• We will support your scientific career and application for postdoctoral fellowships on your path towards scientific leadership
• You will have flexibility to develop your own line of research within the framework of this project
• We encourage the attendance of relevant (inter-) national conferences to increase your visibility and present the project outcomes
• You will be involved in the supervision of junior researchers and teaching in the lab