Assistant Professional Researcher

NATURE AND PURPOSE

The Professional Researcher develops and oversees their own independent, creative, and high-quality research program equivalent to that required for the Professor series. The Professional Researcher takes major responsibility and leadership for their programs. Generally, the appointee is expected to secure funding as a Principal Investigator but may be funded as a co-PI within a large center or collaborative program grant on which many independent investigators are working, as long as it is clear that the activities led by the professional researcher within the larger project constitute his/her own independent research program. Appointees do not have teaching responsibilities.

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES

I.RESEARCH (90%)

The candidate will develop an independent research program on the molecular characteristics of dietary intake and its impact on human health and disease through multi-omics approaches and computational biology.

Research activity (70%)

The candidate will be expected to design and conduct studies designed to determine the relationship between the molecular characteristics of diet and clinical health outcomes through the integration of glycomics, proteomics, lipidomics, and metabolomics food composition data. The appointee will investigate the influence of these multi-omics dietary features on gastrointestinal and metabolic health outcomes and their interaction via compositional and functional characteristics of the gut microbiome. Computational approaches for analyzing large-scale datasets will include bioinformatics workflows, natural language processing and development of AI/ML algorithms. The appointee will publish research results in peer-reviewed journals as senior author in the fields of nutrition, bioinformatics and microbiome research.

Grant Acquisition and Management (20%)

The candidate will acquire funding to support an independent research program, managing a budget and research projects, and write and submit progress reports to funding agencies.

II.PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE AND ACTIVITY (5%)

The candidate will participate in professional societies and conferences related to nutrition, bioinformatics, microbiome research, and artificial intelligence in biology. They will serve as a reviewer for research proposals and scientific publications in these fields. The candidate will present research at national and international scientific meetings and may coordinate seminars and laboratory meetings focusing on computational approaches in nutritional research.

III.UNIVERSITY AND PUBLIC SERVICE (5%)

University and Public Service is required for the Associate and Full Title ranks. The candidate will engage in University service activities such as guest lecturing on topics related to nutritional systems biology and computational approaches innutrition research. The candidate will participate in committee service, particularly those related to bioinformatics and data science initiatives. They will engage in public outreach activities to communicate complex nutritional science concepts to the general public and provide evidence-based dietary advice to individuals and public agencies based on molecular and microbiome research findings.

*Ph.D. in nutrition, food science or related field.

*3+ years research experience after PhD.

*3+ years' experience with AI/ML in nutrition related projects.

*5+ years' experience in host-diet-microbiome research, supported by publications in this area.

*3+ years of experience in dietary data analysis, supported by publications in this area.

*3+ years' experience with food composition databases.

*3+ years' experience in high performance computing, including shell scripting and experiencewith resource managers such as SLURM.

*5+ years coding experience in R and/or Python.

*3+ years' experience with natural language processing (NLP) and application to foodcomposition data.

*Multiple publications in respected peer-reviewed journals.

*Presented at national conferences.

*Communicates and collaborates well with lab members and colleagues in other labs and atother institutions.

*Experience troubleshooting and optimizing analytical methods, data generation andintegration.

*Experience as manuscript reviewer for respected journals.

• 2-4 required (contact information only)

As a condition of employment, the finalist will be required to disclose if they are subject to any final administrative or judicial decisions within the last seven years determining that they committed any misconduct, are currently being investigated for misconduct, left a position during an investigation for alleged misconduct, or have filed an appeal with a previous employer.

• "Misconduct" means any violation of the policies or laws governing conduct at the applicant's previous place of employment, including, but not limited to, violations of policies or laws prohibiting sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of harassment, discrimination, dishonesty, or unethical conduct, as defined by the employer.
• UC Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy
• UC Anti-Discrimination Policy for Employees, Students and Third Parties
• APM - 035: Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination in Employment

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