APPLICATION CLOSING DATE: September 1st, 2023.
Human Technopole (HT) is a new interdisciplinary life science research institute, created and supported by the Italian Government, with the aim of developing innovative strategies to improve human health. HT is composed of five Centers: Computational Biology, Structural Biology, Genomics, Neurogenomics and Health Data Science. The Centers work together to enable interdisciplinary research and to create an open, collaborative environment that will help promote life science research both nationally and internationally.
About the lab:
Research in the Davila-Velderrain Group combines theoretical and computational tools with single-cell multiomic measurements and extensive collaborative experimentation to characterize and study the cellular complexity of the brain and its vulnerabilities. We are interested in understanding how brain cells work and what leads to dysfunction and disease phenotypes across different biological scales: molecular, cellular, anatomical, populational, and evolutionary. We use the human brain and its disorders as a model system to reveal fundamental concepts about the systems-level mechanisms of how genotypes map to phenotypes at different levels of biological organization. We use model and nonmodel organisms to study the evolution of cell types and the cellular physiological interdependencies that are often impaired in degenerative diseases. From a methodological perspective, we are interested in developing computational technologies integrating tools and concepts from machine learning, network theory, and statistical physics to produce conceptually intuitive resources of value for the life-science community.
See previous work on the research topics of this call:
Blanchard JW, Akay LA, Davila-Velderrain J, von Maydell D, Mathys H, Davidson SM, Effenberger A, Chen CY, Maner-Smith K, Hajjar I, Ortlund EA. APOE4 impairs myelination via cholesterol dysregulation in oligodendrocytes. Nature. 2022 Nov 24;611(7937):769-79.
Ruzicka WB, Mohammadi S, Fullard JF, Davila-Velderrain J, Subburaju S, Tso DR, Hourihan M, Jiang S, Lee HC, Bendl J, PsychENCODE Consortium. Single-cell multi-cohort dissection of the schizophrenia transcriptome. medRxiv. 2022:2022-08.
Mohammadi S, Davila-Velderrain J, Kellis M. A multiresolution framework to characterize single-cell state landscapes. Nature communications. 2020 Oct 26;11(1):5399.
Mohammadi S, Davila-Velderrain J, Kellis M. Reconstruction of cell-type-specific interactomes at single-cell resolution. Cell systems. 2019 Dec 18;9(6):559-68.
Caldu-Primo JL, Alvarez-Buylla ER, Davila-Velderrain J. Structural robustness of mammalian transcription factor networks reveals plasticity across development. Scientific Reports. 2018 Sep 17;8(1):13922.
Liu D, Davila-Velderrain J, Zhang Z, Kellis M. Integrative construction of regulatory region networks in 127 human reference epigenomes by matrix factorization. Nucleic acids research. 2019 Aug 22;47(14):7235-46.
Key tasks and responsibilities:
The successful candidate is expected to support the establishment and maintenance of in-house neurogenomic databases and computational tools. Day-to-day analysis of functional genomics, network biological, and human genetic data is expected. Independent research on methods development and/or integrative analyses would be also encouraged and supported.
Applicants with a computational background and experience or interest in brain biology and disease are encouraged to apply.