Bioinformatician for P4copd Project

The Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) is a cutting-edge institute addressing global public health challenges through research, translation into policy and education. ISGlobal has a broad portfolio in communicable and non-communicable diseases including environmental and climate determinants, and applies a multidisciplinary scientific approach ranging from the molecular to the population level. Research is organized in five programs: Climate, Air Pollution, Nature and Urban Health; Environment and Health over the Lifecourse; Global Viral and Bacterial Infections; Malaria and Neglected Parasitic Diseases and Maternal Child and Reproductive Health. ISGlobal is accredited with the Severo Ochoa distinction, a seal of excellence of the Spanish Science Ministry.

**WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR**:
ISGlobal is seeking an Informatician who is interested in taking over and managing activities of the project P4COPD. The overall project goals are: (1) to investigate the genomic and environmental/lifestyle determinants of COPD in young adults; (2) to contrast them with those determined in children, adolescent and older individuals; and (3) to explore the feasibility and cost of implementing in clinical practice a P4 strategy for COPD in young adults.

And project/department description could be including here.
As part of the P4COPD project, our work package focuses on the key objective of extending a secure, federated data analysis platform—originally developed for omics data—to support the analysis of medical images. Built on DataSHIELD, this platform enables collaborative research across institutions while preserving data privacy and complying with data protection regulations, particularly in the context of sensitive bioinformatics workflows.
The next phase of our work involves integrating deep learning techniques to handle image data, which introduces new computational and privacy challenges. To meet these, we are implementing and optimizing federated learning algorithms, allowing decentralized training of neural networks without sharing raw image data across nodes.
This enhancement will broaden the platform’s applicability beyond omics, enabling secure and scalable analysis in areas such as medical imaging, clinical research, and multi-modal data integration.

**SPECIFIC DUTIES**:

- Develop cross-platform user interfaces using Flutter, enabling researchers to interact with the federated learning tools and visualize results in a user-friendly, secure environment.
- Create and maintain secure data pipelines to support distributed training and inference of deep learning models across multiple data nodes, adhering to data protection standards.
- Extend and integrate DataSHIELD modules to support deep learning workflows, ensuring smooth orchestration, monitoring, and usability across platforms.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams including data scientists, software developers, and domain experts to ensure robust implementation, effective validation, and real-world applicability of the developed tools.

**AUXILIAR TASKS**

This job description reflects the present requirements of the post but may evolve at any time in the future as duties and responsibilities change and/or develop providing there is appropriate consultation with the post-holder.

**SKILLS**:

- Proactive and motivated person
- Strong organization and team-working skills.
- Professional attitude with attention to details.
- Team player, yet capable of working autonomously
- Familiar with GitHub

The post holder will adhere to ISGlobal principles contained in **People management policy, including Equity, diversity and health safety**. The post holder will respect, and be accountable to ensure ISGlobal policies and procedures.

**TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE / QUALIFICATIONS**:

- Have a completed, or close to completion, Master in Data Science or AI, Engineering Degree in Bioinformatics or Informatics with strong analytics expertise in both back
- and front-end programming
- Programming experience in one or more general purpose programming language that allow him/her to perform statistical analyses: Phyton, R and Flutter
- Experience with front-end apps
- Be willing to work in an interdisciplinary team within a highly collaborative research institute
- Be fluent in spoken and written English

**SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS**:

- We are looking for a person with high organizational and teamwork skills, capable of working
- autonomously, proactively and motivated, with good verbal and written communication.
- Flexibility of schedules will be valued.

**LANGUAGE LEVEL**:

- Proficiency in English
- Catalan and Spanish will be highly valued.

**CONDITIONS**:

- Duration: 6 months
- Starting date: 01/06/2025
- Contract Type: Part time
- Salary: Technician II C

**HOW TO APPLY**:
**SELECTION PROCESS**:
The selection process is designed in two phases:
1- Interview phase of a technical nature, with the team that requires the incorporation. To assess the person'