Postdoctoral opportunity in systems autoimmunity with Dr. Fragiadakis and Dr. Combes

The Combes Lab and the Fragiadakis Lab invite applications from highly creative, motivated, and team-oriented postdoctoral fellows to lead an innovative cross-disciplinary project situated at the cutting edge of autoimmunity, human immunology, and systems immunology. Ideal candidates will possess significant expertise in handling high-dimensional datasets, as this role is primarily focused on computational immunology research.

Project background:

Autoimmune diseases exhibit wide-ranging heterogeneity in symptoms, affected organs, disease severity, and treatment responses. This diversity presents challenges in treatment, often necessitating a trial-and-error approach to find effective therapies. This project aims to deepen our understanding of shared immune dysregulation across autoimmune conditions, exploring whether common immune patterns, including cellular composition and gene activation, exist across diseases and patient groups, thereby defining universal autoimmune archetypes. The goal is to shift from individual treatment strategies to a comprehensive understanding of autoimmune disease mechanisms, potentially transforming patient care. The successful applicant will collaborate with Drs. Combes and Fragiadakis to unravel the cellular and genetic networks of these archetypes and their links to disease progression. This project is possible thanks a unique cohort of human samples collected across a variety of auto immune diseases, and tissues with single-cell multi-omics data through the UCSF AutoIPI consortium. This position gives the opportunity to work with a cross disciplinary team composed of computational scientists, clinicians, and immunologists.

Environment:

The Combes Lab and the Fragiadakis Lab are integral components of the Department of Pathology and the Department of Medicine, respectively, at UCSF. Our labs’ have substantial shared research focus in human systems immunology across a variety of biological contexts including cancer, infection, and autoimmune disease. Additionally, they hold leadership roles within the newly established UCSF CoLab Initiative, and are core members of the UCSF Immunology program Bakar ImmunoX. Within the UCSF Immunology research program, both labs play crucial roles in advancing immunological research and collaboration. This is a first-in-class program at UCSF that utilizes state-of-the-art technologies, and infrastructure, and a unique data-sharing model to support a community of researchers and clinicians in finding solutions together. By restructuring traditional research, we create opportunities for cross-fertilization of ideas, discoveries, and insights.

Mentoring is an essential aspect of this position, and we place great emphasis on helping the successful candidate achieve their career goals. This includes developing a mentoring plan that evaluates the needs and goals of each postdoctoral researcher based on their background, interests, and needs, and identifying activities necessary to achieve them. There will be opportunities to mentor trainees, including research associates and graduate students. UCSF provides several resources that support career development, such as workshops on preparing K99 awards and other fellowships.

Required Qualifications:

  • MD/PhD, PhD, or MD in immunology, bioinformatics, or a related field
  • Experience in the analysis of large sequencing datasets.
  • Expertise in bioinformatics (e.g. analysis of large genomics and/or proteomics datasets, R, Python, Bash).
  • Ability to work independently.
  • Creativity and thinking outside the box.
  • Collaborative mindset
  • Motivation to utilize new technologies and explore novel concepts.
  • Self-motivation and enthusiasm for the research project
  • Attention to detail.
  • Strong work ethic
  • Excellent communication skills

 

Preferred Qualifications:

A desirable set of expertise includes a subset of some of the listed areas:

  • Experience in autoimmunity and immune related disorders
  • Experience in immunological assays (e.g., cellular assays, flow cytometry, western blots, ELISA, animal work, single-cell sequencing)
  • Expertise in single cell sequencing data generation and analysis

 

Required Application Materials:

To Apply please contact Alexis Combes and Gabriela Fragiadakis with the following materials:

  • An updated CV and publication list
  • A short statement why you are interested in our lab, your past research experience, future research interest, and career goals (≤1 page)
  • Contact information for 2-3 references (will not be contacted without your explicit permission)