Received from Charles Elkan, 22 April 2006

Wanted: outstanding candidates for a bioinformatics postdoctoral position in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The start date can be any time in spring or summer 2006. The position is open to candidates of all nationalities.

What is the project?

This is a new four-year project funded by NIH through an R01 grant to PI Prof. Milton H. Saier, with Prof. Charles Elkan as co-PI. The goal of the project is to automate the future development of an existing successful database of over 3000 membrane transport proteins known as TCDB.

For information on TCSDB see http://www.tcdb.org/ and Saier MH Jr, Tran CV, Barabote RD. "TCDB: the Transporter Classification Database for membrane transport protein analyses and information", Nucleic Acids Res. 2006 Jan 1;34:D181-6. which is available at http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/34/suppl_1/D181

The goal of the project is to use text classification methods to identify automatically new articles that contain data that should be entered into TCDB, and then to use information extraction algorithms to extract specific facts to populate the database.

The person hired will be strongly encouraged to do independent research also.

Who should apply?

Researchers holding a Ph.D. in computer science or bioinformatics who can do high-quality research in information extraction and text mining from scientific articles. Current postdocs and new Ph.D. graduates are both welcome.

Essential:

Able to design and implement methods for real-world text processing
Able to first-author high-quality conference and journal papers

Desirable:

Knowledge of machine learning methods applied to bioinformatics
Knowledge of cellular and molecular biology
Experience with robust, scalable, web-based software development

How to apply

Send a CV as soon as possible to Prof. Elkan at elkan@cs.ucsd.edu. Leading candidates will be asked to arrange for letters of recommendation to be sent also.

About San Diego and UCSD

UCSD is an equal-opportunity employer offering competitive salaries and benefits. The UCSD campus is located in one of the most scenic parts of southern California, with one of the best climates in the world, and with dozens of biotechnology and biomedical companies and research centers within a few miles.

UCSD is one of the top-ranked universities in the world for bioinformatics research. Computational biology faculty include Profs. Pavel Pevzner, Vineet Bafna, and Eleazar Eskin. Machine learning faculty include Profs. Yoav Freund, Lawrence Saul, Sanjoy Dasgupta, and Gary Cottrell.