Statistics Jobs in Australia:
2008 January - March
Graham Wood, 6 February 2008
Scientific Programmer/Research Assistant
Macquarie University
Project title: Software development for cotranslational protein structure prediction.
Position: Scientific Programmer/Research Assistant: Level 6, Step 1 Salary $55,676 plus 19.05% on-costs. Period of employment: March to December, 2008.
Institutions: Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and Oxford University, UK.
Project summary: Proteins, folded chains of amino acids, are the building blocks of life. Protein structure prediction – moving from the chain of amino acids to the three dimensional protein structure – remains one of the outstanding scientific challenges of our day.
It is generally acknowledged by experimentalists that proteins fold as they are produced in the ribosome. The potential power of such “cotranslational” folding, however, has not been used in currently available protein folding algorithms.
The research groups of Deane (Oxford University) and Wood (Macquarie University) have investigated, in recent years, whether cotranslational folding can be used in protein structure prediction. They have recently concluded that, for certain proteins, this appears to be the case. Their work to date has relied on use of Rosetta, software developed at the University of Washington for protein fold prediction, starting from fully extended amino acid chains.
The research project has reached the point where full control of the software used for prediction is needed. The task in this position is to commence the development of such software.
Particular tasks will include
Development of data structures capable of handling populations of partial protein conformations
Development of an "in house" scoring function
Development of a flexible optimisation structure that would allow a variety of common optimisation methods to be tested.
The person sought would have a degree in Computer Science, Statistics or Mathematics and be a strong C, C++ programmer with at least two years programming experience. Some familiarity with protein structure and Perl would be an advantage. They would work within the Department of Statistics at Macquarie University.
Please apply by sending your CV and a covering letter to Professor Graham Wood (Enquiries to phone: 02 9850 8553) at gwood@efs.mq.edu.au .
Closing Date: 29 February 2008.
