Open Rank Scientist-Computational Biologist

Digital Science and Innovation/ Artificial Intelligence and Digital Research/ Computational Biology/ Novo Nordisk Research Center China (NNRCC):

Research Informatics China

Are you enthusiastic about influencing decision-making in the core areas of target discovery and drug development? Do you thrive in a highly globalized and diverse research setting, where you will play a key role in designing next-generation medications to improve the lives of patients with diabetes and other serious chronic diseases? Are you deeply curious about complex disease mechanisms? Are you eager to explore data-driven methods to solve biological problems? If so, you could be our next esteemed Computational Biologist at AIDR, based at the Novo Nordisk Research Center China.

About NNRCC
NNRCC, founded in 1997, takes pride in being the first R&D centre established by a multinational pharmaceutical company in China that taps into the surrounding wealth of opportunities and talents in biomedical sciences.  At our core, we are driven by a vision to become a centre of technological excellence and to forge collaborations among pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, research entities, and hospitals. Since its establishment, NNRCC has successfully become an essential and integral part of the Novo Nordisk R&D organization and contributed to filling the pipeline with novel product candidates.

About the Area & the Position
In Digital Science & Innovation (DSI), our vision is to accelerate first- and best-in-class drug discovery for serious chronic disease through digital sciences and AI.  As computational biologist, we collaborate closely with research scientists across the R&D area to deliver new and better drugs by understanding biological data, including throughput assay data, omics data and image data to enhance disease understanding towards next generation of healthcare products for chronic disease patients.

Your responsibility will be to work closely with stakeholders across our R&D sites in China, UK, Denmark and US to contribute to early pipeline by enabling data-driven decision making across various stages of drug discovery from the identification and validation of new therapeutic targets and biomarkers utilizing both in-house and public datasets. Your expertise will be essential in comprehending molecular profiles, pathway and network, modes of action, disease progression, and epigenetic signals in the context of metabolic diseases. In this position, you will collaborate closely with the global target discovery (GTD) team to guide assay development and drive data analysis. Your skill in extracting new insights from complex data and evaluating them from comprehensive viewpoints will be essential for succeeding in this role. Additionally, active engagement with stakeholders across diverse disciplines and international boundaries, both internally and externally, will be an inherent aspect of this position.

Qualifications
•    PhD in applied mathematics, bioinformatics, computational biology, system biology, biological sciences, or related field, with a minimum of 3 years of experience in the pharmaceutical/ biotechnology industry or academia. 

•    Solid expertise in specific areas of biological mechanisms and target/biomarker discovery process, including but not limited to multi-omics, pathway analysis, network approach, genetic and epigenetics analysis, human cohort study.
•    Proven hands-on experience in analysing large, complex, and high-dimensional biomedical datasets.
•    Excellent understanding of drug discovery process and chronic disease biology, particularly within NN's core Therapeutic areas (Obesity, Diabetes and other chronic diseases).

•    Proficiency in common computational biology programming languages (e.g. Python, R, Bash) as well as package, dependency and environment management tools.
•    Preferred experience in omics foundation model and knowledge graph.
•    Demonstrated scientific creativity and innovative mindset, evidenced by strong publication track record and/or proposal and execution of novel research project.

•    Potential in identifying and coordinating cross-disciplinary collaboration and connections in the AI-Biopharma field.
•    Passion in tackling scientifically challenging problems in a dynamic working environment coupled with the ability to engage, influence and collaborate with colleagues across different scientific disciplines.

•    Proficienty in both oral and written English.

We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants. 

At Novo Nordisk we recognize that it is no longer good enough to aspire to be the best company in the world. We need to aspire to be the best company for the world and we know that this is only possible with talented employees with diverse perspectives, backgrounds and cultures. We are therefore committed to creating an inclusive culture that celebrates the diversity of our employees, the patients we serve and communities we operate in. Together, we’re life changing.