Postdoctoral Scientist - Biomedical Informatics

The postdoctoral fellow will be jointly supervised by Prof. Zak Kohane at HMS DBMI and Drs. Will Chen and Drs. Anne Dilley at Biogen. The fellow will work at the intersection of biomedical informatics, systems biology, and epidemiology, to bring new methods and insights to the therapeutic sciences of neurological diseases.
Advances in collection of biomedical data, in particular human-derived ’omics-type data and medical records, are transforming the health sciences. Biogen and the Harvard Medical School Department of Biomedical Informatics is interested in leveraging such advances to understand the molecular basis of neurological disease and the related manifestation in patients. Recent exciting findings demonstrate that advanced analytics using these data sources are able to replicate clinical trials, provide evidence of drug safety, and repurpose drugs to different indications. The time is ripe to develop new capabilities with a strong impact on human health from drug discovery to treatment of individual patients.
The Harvard Medical School Department of Biomedical Informatics is a world-class institution carrying out cutting-edge investigations of using data and related technologies to drive discovery in biomedicine. Biogen is a world-class neurology drug discovery organization carrying out cutting-edge R&D for novel therapies in the areas of neurodegeneration, neuropsychiatry, pain, and other diseases of great unmet need. Both HMS DBMI and Biogen have access to large observational databases that can be leveraged for research purposes. In addition, Biogen is committed to the generation of novel molecular data from clinical trials to advance understanding and treatment of diseases. Together the two institutions will work with the postdoc to advance state-of-the-art algorithms to derive value for understanding and impacting human health.
We are looking for a post-doctoral researcher to work with a multidisciplinary team on computational methods to identify neurological diseases early using “real world” data sources such as electronic health record and claims data as well as clinical trial data including genomics. The researcher will link teams at Biogen with a collaborating team at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Biomedical Informatics and will be expected to spend substantial time with both groups.

Strong computational skills as well as creativity in formulating novel approaches to addressing biomedical research questions
Experience in R or Python necessary
Familiarity with SQL, SAS, and biomedical databases a plusPhD in a biomedical quantitative

Biogen and the Harvard Medical School Department of Biomedical Informatics (HMS DBMI) is seeking a joint postdoctoral fellow interested in developing next generation informatics and analytics methods to enhance understanding of neurological disease biology and patient populations.