Career Center

All required qualifications must be documented on application materials.
Required:
● A doctoral degree in genetics, bioinformatics, computer science, biostatistics, biomedical engineering, industrial engineering, applied mathematics, biophysics, or other appropriate areas;
● Strong motivation in working in cancer genomics and modeling of clonal dynamics
● Script language programming skills (e.g., R, Matlab, Python, Julia);
● Written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred:
● Experience in cancer genomics, or
● Knowledge of models in stochastic processes, or
● Background in the study of population genetics, or
● Experience in the application of statistical learning

Job description:
The Sun lab is seeking a highly-motivated postdoc with a passion and perseverance on advancing cancer data science. The Sun Lab (https://ruping.github.io/) is located at the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities campus. Our work stems from the rationale that one can quantify intra tumor heterogeneity (ITH, or genomic diversity of cell populations) from patient tumor sequencing data and in turn leverage the patterns of ITH to infer the mode (or the way) of clonal evolution in vivo. We strive to bridge ITH with mathematical modeling in order to delineate the roles of the genomic aberrations on the development of patient tumors. For example, we are creating computational tools for yielding novel insights into both the evolutionary trajectories and roles of somatic copy number aberrations during tumorigenesis (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.14.495959v1), and for connecting the genomic distance between longitudinal tumor samples with underlying evolutionary parameters through modeling (https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008838). We also maintain vigorous collaborations with experimental biologists, clinicians, and mathematical oncologists to maximize the impact of our work.

Example research topics are:
1) Modeling of the copy number evolution and clonal evolution in cancer.
2) Methods for quantifying and visualizing ITH from NGS data;

Based on his/her training background, the person who holds this position will receive mentoring on different aspects that he/she would like to develop further and a tailored training for career development. This includes but is not limited to grant writing, project design and management, and teaching skills. While the successful candidate is expected to get involved in the aforementioned research topics, his/her own research interests will be encouraged and promoted under the general scope of the lab. For more information on the position, applicants may directly email Ruping Sun, Ph.D. (ruping@umn.edu).

About University of Minnesota Twin Cities

The University of Minnesota, founded in the belief that all people are enriched by understanding, is dedicated to the advancement of learning and the search for truth; to the sharing of this knowledge through education for a diverse community; and to the application of this knowledge to benefit the people of the state, the nation, and the world.

Connections working at University of Minnesota Twin Cities