Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychiatric Genetics
The laboratories of Loes Olde Loohuis and Nelson Freimer at University of California, Los Angeles’s Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics invite applications for a postdoctoral position in psychiatric genetics, with a focus on common and rare genetic variation in admixed and founder populations.
The successful candidate will contribute to multiple large-scale initiatives aimed at advancing genetic discovery in populations with diverse and complex ancestry. These include the recently sequenced Misión Origen biobank, an EHR-linked case-control cohort of 90,000 individuals, including cases with serious mental illness and matched controls, from the Paisa founder population of Colombia, and the PUMAS project, a multi-cohort initiative encompassing about 200,000 sequenced participants of Latin American and African ancestry.
Research activities can span statistical genetics, computational genomics, and population genetics, including association analyses of common and rare coding variants, characterization of population structure and admixture, cross-ancestry methods development, and integration of genomic data with rich clinical phenotypes derived from electronic health records. The diversity of ancestries and the unique genetic characteristics of the populations studied offer exceptional opportunities for both discovery and methodological innovation in population and psychiatric genetics.
The position involves active collaboration with an international network of investigators across the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Based on recent rare variant discoveries made by our group, the position will also provide opportunities for participation in studies conducting deep phenotyping in individuals re-recruited based on genotypes and for collaborations with investigators conducting stem cell and mouse genetics modeling studies.
Candidates should hold a PhD in human genetics, statistical genetics, computational biology, bioinformatics, or a related quantitative discipline, and have demonstrated experience with large-scale genomic data analysis.
Interested applicants, please reach out to Drs. Loes Olde Loohuis and Nelson Freimer.
The University of California is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected status under state or federal law.