What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Scientist / Principal Scientist, Statistical Genetics position at Beam Therapeutics?
Beam Therapeutics is a biotechnology company committed to establishing the leading, fully integrated platform for precision genetic medicines. To achieve this vision, Beam has assembled a platform that includes a suite of gene editing and delivery technologies and is in the process of building internal manufacturing capabilities. Beam’s suite of gene editing technologies is anchored by base editing, a proprietary technology that is designed to enable precise, predictable and efficient single base changes, at targeted genomic sequences, without making double-stranded breaks in the DNA. This has the potential to enable a wide range of potential therapeutic editing strategies that Beam is using to advance a diversified portfolio of base editing programs. Beam is a values-driven organization committed to its people, cutting-edge science, and a vision of providing life-long cures to patients suffering from serious diseases.
Position Overview
The Research department at Beam is seeking an innovative and collaborative computational geneticist to support the development of gene editing therapies using large-scale human genetic data. This individual will play a key role in developing Beam’s computational genetics capability and will use insights derived from human genetics to aid in the identification and development of novel base editing therapeutics
Responsibilities
- Perform genetic association analysis (GWAS, PHEWAS, EWAS) of common and rare variants with the goal of translating results into novel therapeutic opportunities for base editing
- Develop and maintain analytical pipelines for the quality control, analysis, and interpretation of biobank-scale genetic association analyses
- Critically evaluate and interpret the results of human genetics analyses for translation potential using base editing or related approaches
- Participate implementation of new statistical genetics tools and software
- Collaborate with computational biologists and wet-lab biologists to translate genetic findings into therapeutic opportunities
Qualifications
- PhD with 4-8 years of relevant post-degree experience in biostatistics, genetic epidemiology, human genetics, bioinformatics, or other relevant scientific fields
- Proficient in the R statistical programming language and experience running statistical genetics software (e.g. PLINK, Regenie, Mendelian Randomization)
- Experience performing genome-wide and phenome-wide association studies on paired genetic and phenotype data
- Experience with UK Biobank, All of Us, or similar biobank style datasets is preferred
- Experience with target validation is preferred
- Excellent communication and presentation skills required
- Prior GMP experience
- Scientific knowledge and direct experience with analytical method transfer processes
- Advanced technical writing skills
- Advanced problem-solving ability
- Ability to work independently in a high-paced team environment, meet deadlines, and prioritize work from multiple projects.
- Collaborative with “Team First” mentality
- Communicate effectively with peers, and demonstrate collaboration across different functional groups
