Research Scientist, AI/ML

Biohub is leading the new era of AI-powered biology to cure or prevent disease through its 501c3 medical research organization, with the support of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

The Team

The Biohub in Chicago is an independent nonprofit research institute that brings together three powerhouse universities - Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - into a single collaborative technology and discovery engine. Biohub itself supports some of the brightest, boldest engineers, data scientists, and biomedical researchers to make breakthroughs in medicine and develop new technologies, frequently in collaboration with our partner universities. We are guided by our values of scholarly excellence; disruptive innovation; hands-on engineering/hacking/building; partnership and collaboration; open communication and respect; inclusiveness; and opportunity for all.

Our Vision

• We pursue large scientific challenges that cannot be pursued in conventional environments
• We enable individual investigators to pursue their riskiest and most innovative ideas
• The technologies developed at the Biohub facilitate research by scientists and clinicians at our home institutions and beyond

Diversity of thought, ideas, and perspectives are at the heart of Biohub and enable disruptive innovation and scholarly excellence. We are committed to cultivating an organization where all colleagues feel inspired and know their work makes an important contribution.

The Opportunity

The AI/ML team is funding and building one of the largest computing systems dedicated to nonprofit life sciences research in the world. This new effort will provide the scientific community with access to predictive models of healthy and diseased cells, which will lead to groundbreaking new discoveries that could help researchers cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century.

As a Scientist on the AI/ML team, you will apply and optimize state-of-the-art models in artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve important problems in the biomedical sciences aligned with our mission. You will work on a team responsible for developing and deploying ML models that use data developed by our organization and research partners all for the purpose of contributing to greater understanding of human cell function.

This role will be based out of the Chicago location.

What You'll Do

• Develop and apply state-of-the-art AI/ML method to model biological sequences and structures.
• Design and implement cutting-edge computational methods for modeling 3D structures of Immune protein complexes.
• In depth analysis of computational 3D biomolecular models.
• Benchmarking structure and sequence based predictive model for downstream tasks.
• Coordinate with our lab scientists to design and optimize design and validation strategies.
• Contribute to scientific publications and presentations at conferences.

What You'll Bring

Essential -

• PhD in Computer Science, Computational Biology, Math or a related quantitative field 
• 2 years experience in applying deep learning to model biological sequences and structures
• Experience with PyMol or other molecular visualization software
• History of writing clean, well-documented, and reproducible code
• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to work independently

• Nice to have
• Ability to work effectively in teams spanning computational and experimental domains
• Prior projects focused on modeling 3D biological structures and protein-protein interactions
• Track record of high-impact publications in computational biology or related fields
• Familiarity with bioinformatics tools and drug discovery pipelines

Compensation

The Chicago, IL base pay range for a new hire in this role is $143,000 - $181,100. New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range, enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on job-related skills and experience, as evaluated throughout the interview process. 

Benefits for the Whole You 

We’re thankful to have an incredible team behind our work. To honor their commitment, we offer a wide range of benefits to support the people who make all we do possible. 

• Provides a generous employer match on employee 401(k) contributions to support planning for the future.
• Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice. 
• Funding for select family-forming benefits. 
• Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving

If you’re interested in a role but your previous experience doesn’t perfectly align with each qualification in the job description, we still encourage you to apply as you may be the perfect fit for this or another role.

#LI-Onsite