PhD Positions in Data Analytics for eHealth and Life Sciences

[Apologies for cross-posting]

PhD Positions in Data Analytics for eHealth and Life Sciences

Academic, clinical and industrial communities often have difficulties on systematically analysing large volumes, heterogeneous and complex nature of clinical and biomedical datasets, and fully extract valuable information. The gap between data generation and data interpretation is increasing at an alarming rate in the biomedical and biological communities. In order to overcome the hindrance of analysing complex, heterogeneous, high-throughput datasets and reducing the gap of data generation and interpretation a designated computational infrastructure for managing and analysing big datasets is required.

The eHealth and Life Sciences Unit at the INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics (previously known as Digital Enterprise Research Institute), National University of Ireland, Galway, invites applications for PhD positions in the area of Data Analytics for eHealth and Life Sciences domain. We plan to investigate some of the core challenges in developing a scalable, robust and reliable platform to integrate and analyse the associations between biomedical and biological datasets. We have currently open PhD positions in the following research areas:

Knowledge Representation & Integration: This is particularly targeted towards (1) ontology building for eHealth and Life Sciences domain: to build a consistent and unifying knowledge framework from several domain specific/proprietary/standard vocabularies, codes, and terminologies has been considered as one of the hardest challenge in the Life Sciences domain; and (2) ontology alignment for eHealth and Life Sciences domain: aligning Life Sciences artefacts represented at the various levels of granularity, structure, and purposes has been considered as an open research problem for computer scientists as well as the domain experts. The PhD candidate will work to address these challenges and develop next generation ontology building and alignment algorithms and tools for the eHealth and Life Sciences domain.


Data Integration & Analytics Infrastructure: This is targeted towards developing intelligent data integration and analytics modules, the PhD candidate will work towards addressing one or more topics of (1) efficient data curation methods (i.e., extract, transform, clean, align and store high-throughput clinical and biomedical datasets); (2) advanced data indexing and metadata processing system; (3) scalable & distributed query federation mechanism; (4) advanced algorithms to link Life sciences data sets from public and proprietary repositories; and (5) privacy and policy aware access  to sensitive clinical resources (e.g., genomic, electronic health records); and (6) advanced data visualisation tools for intuitive and summarised view of biological resources residing at disparate locations and repositories.



Eligibility

*        Four Years Bachelor's Degree or Master's Degree in Computer Science/Information Technology/BioInformatics/Medical Informatics

*        Good knowledge of object-oriented design principles

*        Strong background in Java programming


Bonus Skills

*        Knowledge of large-scale distributed information systems and federated query processing

*        Knowledge of Biomedical/Biological/Medical domains

*        Knowledge of Database Systems

*        Knowledge of Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data

*        Knowledge of heterogeneous structured and semi-structured data formats e.g RDB, XML and RDF.

*        Knowledge of designing data visualisation tools e.g. mashups


Stipend: PhD scholarship stipend of 18,000 per year, no tax. The duration of the contract will be 3 years as a fully funded PhD.


Application procedure

Job Posting: http://deri.ie/content/phd-positions-data-analytics-ehealth-and-life-sciences and http://www.insight-centre.org/content/phd-positions-data-analytics-ehealth-and-life-sciences
Informal enquiries about these positions may be made to:
hr.ie@deri.org<mailto:hr.ie@deri.org>
ratnesh.sahay@deri.org<mailto:ratnesh.sahay@deri.org>  (Dr. Ratnesh Sahay)

When applying, please use the same email addresses above and put "PhD Positions in Data Analytics for eHealth and Life Sciences" in the subject line of your email.  Candidates are requested to submit a cover letter and a CV (in PDF format). Candidates may also indicate preference for one of the two (Knowledge Representation & Integration, Data Integration & Analytics Infrastructure) areas in their cover letter.

Interviews will be carried over as soon as suitable candidates are identified, and the position needs to be filled as soon as possible. We expect the successful candidate to start at the earliest possible date, ideally in June-August 2014.



INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics (previously DERI http://deri.ie/) http://www.insight-centre.org/ is a leading research institute in Semantic Web/Linked Data technologies that offers a stimulating, dynamic and multi-cultural research environment, excellent ties to research-groups worldwide, close collaboration with industrial partners and up-to-date infrastructure and resources.


Ratnesh Sahay, PhD

Unit Leader

e-health and Life Sciences

INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics

NUI Galway, The DERI building

IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan

Galway, IRELAND

Tel: + 353 91 495253

Fax: + 353 91 495541

Web: http://www.ratneshsahay.org/