Postdoctoral Associate, SMART CAMP Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine

Project Overview
SMART CAMP (Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine) is a new interdisciplinary research programme in Singapore (CREATE international research campus and innovation hub) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). SMART CAMP addresses key technology bottlenecks in cell therapy manufacturing: (i) critical quality attributes of safe, effective cell therapy products; and (ii) integrated process analytics to monitor and modulate those attributes. While cell therapies are poised to transform healthcare for both the industry and the patient, there remain many outstanding scientific and technical challenges to significant global impact that this R&D programme addresses. This high-impact focus includes measurement and feedback control of processing parameters (process analytic technologies, or PAT) that contribute to cell viability and function during cell proliferation, and the measurement at intermediate and final steps of the cell product properties correlated with positive therapeutic outcomes (critical quality attributes, or CQA).

This interdisciplinary team comprises engineers, biologists, clinicians, manufacturing, and data analytics experts from multiple MIT academic units, and multiple Singapore-based universities, research centres of excellence, and hospitals who are experienced at translational demonstrations of technologies in safety-regulated industries such as cell therapies. As with all postdoctoral associates (PDAs) in SMART CAMP based in Singapore, the PDA will work in a diverse team of experts including several principal investigators (PIs) and PDAs, and receive direct mentorship regarding career development from a pair of who are based in Singapore and at MIT, respectively.

CAMP's unique, enabling and cross-cutting capabilities include cell and clinical biology, microfluidics, real-time optics and spectroscopies, 3D-printed devices, process analytics, data analytics, and bioinformatics. This programme will demonstrate these approaches required of cell-based personalized medicine through three translational testbeds (three Flagship Projects), ultimately facilitating access for more patients to life-saving, approved cell therapies for currently intractable health challenges. These flagship projects will address allogeneic and autologous cell therapy products, including but not limited to cell sources including adult stem/progenitor cells and immune cells for treatment of specific cancers, tissue degeneration, and autoimmune diseases. This PDA is part of the core postdoctoral research team of CAMP, and will contribute his/her/their expertise to all three flagship projects as appropriate:

Flagship Project 1: Label-free critical quality attributes (CQA) for personalized efficacy of cell therapies, including multivariate analysis of biological and biophysical attributes
Flagship Project 2: Rapid critical quality attributes (CQA) for safety of cell sources & cell therapy products, including process analytic technologies (PAT)
Flagship Project 3: Integrated process analytic technologies (PAT) for cell proliferation and recovery, including in-line and intermittent monitoring to promote efficacy and safety CQA

Job Responsibilities
CAMP Core - Data analytics and machine learning
SMART CAMP research will address key bottlenecks in manufacturing therapeutic cells: critical quality attributes (CQA) of cells that elicit anticipated therapeutic response, and process analytic technologies (PAT) that monitor and maintain those attributes during cell expansion. This requires expertise in data analytics to identify correlates in high-dimensional datasets and to enable cell selection. Due to the various CQA and PAT involving large quantities of complex data, this PDA is one of two core positions of data scientists. This expertise in artificial intelligence-based machine learning/deep learning-based data analytics enabling rapid image analysis; the other core PDA contributes expertise in handling large data for in silico experiments using bioinformatic approaches. This core PDA will be collaborating with cell biologists, engineers and clinicians across all three CAMP flagship project teams to support data analysis needs.

This PDA is responsible for establishing the data analytics workflow of the core that focuses on optical data analysis for PAT decisions, consulting and seek input from CAMP colleagues to define, train and implement data projects to convert data to understanding that is amenable to CQA validation and PAT integration required of next-generation cell therapy production. This PDA will employ artificial intelligence methods, such as statistical machine learning with generative models, for regression analysis. Opportunities for specialized studies include analyzing real-time video imagery of cell geometric or physical parameters, and developing novel computational methods for analyzing new readouts from imaging, spectroscopy, hyper-spectral imaging, -omics data, or microfluidics, emphasizing the incorporation of biophysical models in the machine learning engines.

Job Requirements
Ph.D. degree in computational biology, bioinformatics, AI-based machine/deep learning, or a related field in the biological data sciences.
Highly motivated candidate with experience in interdisciplinary data research, with outstanding skills and abilities in informatics, data curation, large scale multivariate data analysis, statistics and statistical model building, as evidenced by publications and presentations
Excellent verbal and written English communication skills and desire to understand others problems and serve others are required
Excellent time management and organizational skills
Demonstrated ability to work independently, and to work collaboratively in a team
Self-motivated, independent, with superior organizational and analytical skills
Good track record of publications and scientific output
Able and committed to work in Singapore

To apply, please visit our website at: http://smart.mit.edu/careers/career-opportunities. Interested applicants are invited to send in their full CV/resume, cover letter and list of three references (to include reference names and contact information). We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.