Scientist / Senior Scientist (Bioinformatician)

[What the role is]The mission of SFA is to ensure and secure a supply of safe food for Singapore.

The National Centre for Food Science (NCFS) supports SFA’s regulatory functions in ensuring safe food for all by providing scientific evidence through laboratory testing, research and development, data science and exposure analysis, and risk assessment to address emerging food safety and security concerns. NCFS is equipped with state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and is constantly developing new capabilities to detect emerging foodborne hazards.

The officer will be a Scientist/Senior Scientist in the Biological Research team under the Research & Exposure Science Department (RESD) to develop and deploy advanced food safety research and testing capabilities to address evolving threats from foodborne hazards. The selected candidate will have ample career development opportunities including access to advanced training courses, presentation at local and international conferences, and collaboration with internal and external stakeholders.

[What you will be working on]

The officer will be expected to:

Conduct applied biological and microbiological research, identify problem statements, generate research hypotheses, recommend technology-based solutions, and/or determine computational strategies, in support of the agency’s food safety operations, risk assessment and policies

Perform integrative analysis on high throughput sequencing datasets related to food microbiology (e.g. genomics, transcriptomics, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics)

Conduct phylogenetic and statistical inference to obtain biological insights from big genomic data

Develop and implement bioinformatics pipelines for workflow automation

Build models and classifiers for predictive analytics

Develop and maintain databases for cataloguing large microbial genomic datasets

Communicate research findings through conference presentations, scientific publications, and project reports that may be catered for different audiences. (E.g. academics, scientists, policy makers, and the general public)

Organise and maintain proper documentation of research data, scientific interpretations, and project proposals

Provide basic bioinformatics training for in-house microbiologists

Perform administrative support work such as procurement of laboratory supplies and equipment as well as preparation of research grants

[What we are looking for]

BSc, MSc or PhD in computational biology, biological sciences, computer science, or other relevant disciplines

Relevant experience in computer programming and/or genomics analysis (WGS and metagenomics)

Familiarity with Illumina and/or Nanopore sequencing data analysis.

Experience with various sequence mapping, variant calling and genome assembly tools

Knowledge in scripting bioinformatics pipelines (Nextflow/Snakemake)

Strong programming and debugging skills, preferably with experience in Python and R

Comfortable with High-Performance/Cloud computing and ability to learn new programming languages and paradigms with minimal guidance

Basic understanding of food microbiology, molecular biology, and epidemiology

Knowledge in microbiome and/or microbial genetics would be an advantage

Possess peer-reviewed scientific publications in bioinformatics and/or microbiology

Strong critical thinking, problem-solving, communication and collaborative skills

Resilience and ability to multi-task

Other Information

Work Location: National Centre for Food Science, Techquest, 7 International Business Park, Singapore 609919

If you do not hear from us within 4 weeks of your job ad closing date, we seek your understanding that it is likely that we are not moving forward with your application for this role. We thank you for your interest and would like to assure you that this does not affect your other job applications with the Public Service. We encourage you to explore and apply for other job roles with the Singapore Food Agency or the wider Public Service.

JR-