Group Leaders in Computational Biology

APPLICATION CLOSING DATE: March 12th, 2025

Human Technopole (HT) is an interdisciplinary life science research institute, created and supported by the Italian Government, with the aim of developing innovative strategies to improve human health. HT focuses on seven main research areas: Computational Biology, Structural Biology, Genomics, Neurogenomics, Health Data Science, Molecular Cell Biology, and Biophysical Modelling and Simulation. These areas are organised into five Research Centres thatwork collaboratively to enable interdisciplinary research and to foster an open, collaborative environment that will help promote life science research both nationally and internationally.

Human Technopole is seeking two outstanding early-career scientists to establish their independent research group at HT as **Group Leaders** in the field of computational and quantitative biology with the aim of developing new mathematical, computational and AI approaches for the analysis and interpretation of life science data. They will carry out high-quality, internationally competitive research and contribute to the international scientific community.

HT provides cutting-edge infrastructure, including high-performance computing, data storage and state-of-the-art experimental core facilities, such as a Genomics Facility, advanced imaging units, and a Data Handling and Analysis Facility, among others.

HT Research Group Leaders benefit from a competitive core support package that includes funds for staff, consumables, and access to HT’s core Facilities and equipment, which can further be expanded by raising extramural funding. HT also provides access to a collaborative network within the Italian research community and close links to its scientific and industry partners.

We welcome research proposals from any area of computational biology applied to human health. However, priority will be given to research programmes in one of the following areas:

- **Computational Imaging & Computer Vision.**Developing novel algorithms for quantitative analysis of biomedical imaging data across biological scales, including modern computational and AI techniques from disciplines such as computer vision, pattern recognition, optimization, and AI.
- **Biophysical Modelling of Cells and Tissues.** Building biophysical models and integrative simulations to model cell and tissue dynamics in three dimensions. Such efforts leverage on multi-modal molecular, cellular, and tissue-level data to gain insights into cell-cell interactions and emerging properties of complex biological systems, ideally relevant to disease states.
- **Spatial**'**omics and Digital Pathology.** Integrating cutting-edge machine learning approaches to analyse data from spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, and digital histopathology, ideally with the ambition of enabling multi-modal data integration between spatial 'omics and imaging.
- **Computational Structural Biology & Protein Function.**Mapping of biomolecular complexes across spatial scales by leveraging cryo-EM and cryo-ET data, using Large Language Models for _in silico_ inference of protein function and mechanisms.

**Tasks and responsibilities**
- Develop and supervise the establishment of a world-class research programme in computational biology.
- Lead their own research group.
- Foster a diverse and nurturing research environment by leading and mentoring members of their teams.
- Build effective links and collaborations with other HT research investigators.
- Develop and foster links between HT and other national and international research organizations.
- Contribute to the preparation of Centre reports to be reviewed by an external expert board.
- Actively participate in initiatives that pursue improvement of all aspects of HT.
- Actively participate in the co-organization and implementation of activities that will promote the image of HT in the international computational biology community, such as symposia and workshops.
- Contribute to the establishment of a collaborative and open scientific environment by actively participating in meetings and seminar series internal to HT. This will foster synergies between the groups and propagation of knowledge, and
- Raise third-party funding.
- Manage their own budgets.

**Essential requirements**
- Proven record of scientific research output.
- Strong proposal of a competitive research programme in one of the areas mentioned above.
- Fluent command of English.

**Preferred requirements**
- Outstanding track record in one of the abovementioned areas of Computational Biology.
- Expertise in mathematical modelling and/or data science for biomedicine.
- Theoretical and practical knowledge of basic and more advanced AI methods.

**Organisational and social skills**
- Strong interpersonal skills demonstrated by the ability to lead and gain the assistance and cooperation of others in a team endeavour.
- Proven leadership, communication, team building and problem-solving skills.
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