News:2015-01-09: Job: PhD position on Biological Data Visualization at KU Leuven, Belgium

:: Virogenesis – Advanced phylogeny visualization ::

Viruses are the cause of many common human diseases, from the not-so-serious as common cold and cold sores, to the very-serious like HIV and Ebola. Unfortunately, the tools to identify and follow the spread of these viruses leave a lot to be improved. In the European Virogenesis project, we want to change this by building the bioinformatics tools to diagnose viral diseases, monitor their evolution within patients, and track viral outbreaks (think “Ebola”).

Therefore, we are looking to hire a PhD student to focus on the visualization aspects of this project. This includes (but will not be limited to) addressing scalability, uncertainty, and interactivity of phylogenetic trees. In addition, we need to devise ways to combine these trees with for example geo-location data, and find visual encodings to represent changes in viromes.

Initial funding is available for 3 years. Additional funding will be sought to extend this to 4 full years. Postdoctoral researchers are welcome to apply as well, but initial funding will be for a shorter period.

Are you interested in helping us out and have a background in omics and/or data visualization (e.g. using Processing or D3)? If so, please send an email to jan.aerts@esat.kuleuven.be, and include (preferably in PDF): [a] your CV, [b] two references (with email and phone number), [c] if available, one or more figures and/or screencasts of previous data visualization work. Please mention “Virogenesis” in your application.

See http://vda-lab.be for more information about the research group.

Keywords: metagenomics, phylogenetics, visualization, bioinformatics