Applied Statistics Staff Scientist at NSF-NCEMS

The U.S. National Science Foundation National Synthesis Center for Emergence in the Molecular and Cellular Sciences (NCEMS) and the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) at Penn State seek an outstanding scientist to fill an Applied Statistics Staff Scientist (Research Data Scientist - Intermediate Professional) position dedicated to advancing the collaborative research of the Center's Working Groups.

NCEMS is an interdisciplinary research Center positioned at the interface of data science with molecular and cellular biology. The Center provides leadership in the integration of diverse, publicly available datasets, enabling cross-disciplinary teams of scientists to synthesize knowledge and pursue fundamental questions at the forefront of the life sciences.

About the Position: Applied Statistics Staff Scientists play a supporting role in enabling the research efforts of multidisciplinary scientific teams supported by NCEMS, typically contributing to 2-3 projects simultaneously.

Work Arrangement: This position has the potential to be a hybrid of remote and on-site work, with a minimum requirement of 3 days per week on-site at the Penn State University Park campus. This position does not permit fully remote work.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Collaborate with NCEMS Working Groups to design and apply rigorous statistical approaches for integrating, analyzing, and visualizing complex molecular and cellular biology data.

• Apply inferential statistics and formal hypothesis testing to biological datasets, including model specification, estimation, uncertainty quantification, multiple testing control, and power/sample size considerations.

• Develop and validate statistical models for diverse data types and modalities (e.g., genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, proteomic, metabolomic/lipidomic, single-cell, and multi-omics), including generalized linear models and mixed-effects/hierarchical models where appropriate.

• Support the publication of intermediate data products, code, and documentation.

• Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in the application of statistics to bioinformatics, computational biology, and available biological datasets.

Education and Experience:

• M.S. or PhD in Statistics, Biostatistics, Data Science, Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, or a related field is preferred.

• Strong proficiency in R and/or Python for statistical modeling and data analysis.

• Demonstrated experience and understanding of statistical foundations and applied inference including: probability and estimation, study design, linear models/GLMs, multiple comparisons, resampling, and the ability to identify and appropriately address confounders, mediators, and effect modifiers.

• Experience working with complex molecular and cellular datasets such as genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, proteomic, metabolomic/lipidomic, and single-cell or multi-omics data, including common pitfalls (batch effects, sparsity, confounding).

• Experience developing reproducible statistical workflows (version control, documentation, code review practices) and producing publication-quality tables/figures.

• Publications in peer-reviewed journals demonstrating contributions to the field.

• Experience supporting/contributing to multi-PI projects.

Candidates must also demonstrate a commitment to ethical conduct and research integrity, strong work ethic, strong interpersonal and written communication skills, and the ability to work well in a team environment.

Application materials: Required documents include the following:

• A current Curriculum Vitae (CV) or Resume

• A cover letter detailing the candidate's interest in the role

Benefits: Penn State provides a competitive benefits package for full-time employees designed to support both personal and professional well-being. For more detailed information, please visit our Benefits Page.