RESEARCH TECHNICIAN II

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Overview

The Duke Brain Tumor Center supports a multidisciplinary translational research program focused on brain tumors, cancer immunology, spatial genomics, and immunotherapy. The program brings together clinicians, scientists, computational biologists, trainees, and research staff to develop and evaluate immune-based therapies for patients with primary and metastatic brain tumors.

Work Responsibilities

The Research Tech II will support clinical and translational research projects involving human brain tumor datasets, spatial transcriptomics, and multiomic data integration. The position will focus on bioinformatics analysis, with particular emphasis on 10x Genomics Xenium data.

The individual will work closely with neuro-oncologists, medical oncologists, neurosurgeons, pathologists, computational biologists, and other investigators across the Duke Brain Tumor Center, the Duke Center for Brain and Spine Metastases, and the Duke Center for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Responsibilities may include:

1. Perform quality control, processing, analysis, and visualization of Xenium spatial transcriptomics data.

2. Support cell segmentation review, transcript quality assessment, cell-type annotation, spatial neighborhood analysis, and spatial gene-expression analysis.

3. Integrate Xenium data with single-cell RNA sequencing, bulk RNA sequencing, whole-exome sequencing, CODEX or other multiplexed imaging, flow cytometry, TCR/BCR sequencing, MRI/radiomics, and clinical outcome data.

4. Develop and apply reproducible computational workflows using R, Python, or related bioinformatics tools.

5. Organize, curate, and maintain spatial transcriptomic and multiomic datasets from clinical and translational research studies.

6. Develop workflows for spatial cell mapping, immune microenvironment analysis, tumor-immune interaction analysis, neighborhood analysis, and cross-modality integration.

7. Prepare figures, tables, summaries, and preliminary analyses for manuscripts, abstracts, presentations, grant applications, and progress reports.

8. Contribute to interpretation of spatial and molecular findings in collaboration with clinical, pathology, laboratory, and computational teams.

9. Assist students, trainees, and team members with data organization, analysis workflows, visualization, and interpretation.

10. Support research projects focused on glioblastoma, brain metastases, tumor immunology, cancer genomics, and immunotherapy.

The Research Tech II will have access to computational resources, data infrastructure, and collaborative expertise within the Duke Brain Tumor Center. The individual may also assist with related translational or computational research projects as needed.

The individual will be expected to follow standards for responsible conduct of research, maintain clear records of analyses and workflows, comply with policies related to human subjects data, biospecimen-derived data, data security, and research integrity, communicate regularly with faculty and collaborators, and follow all applicable University and departmental policies.

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Preferred Education/Skills

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in cancer biology, genomics, immunology, neuroscience, computational biology, bioinformatics, statistics, data science, or a related field.

Experience analyzing high-dimensional biological datasets.

Familiarity with spatial transcriptomics, single-cell RNA sequencing, next-generation sequencing, or imaging-based omics data.

Experience using R, Python, or related tools for data analysis, visualization, and reproducible research.

Ability to organize, curate, and analyze complex datasets from multiple sources.

Strong attention to detail and clear documentation of analyses and workflows.

Excellent writing, communication, organizational, and teamwork skills.

Ability to work collaboratively with clinicians, pathologists, computational biologists, laboratory scientists, and trainees.

Desirable Skills

Experience with 10x Genomics Xenium, Visium, or other spatial transcriptomic platforms.

Experience with spatial analysis methods, including cell segmentation review, cell-type annotation, neighborhood analysis, ligand-receptor analysis, spatially variable gene analysis, and integration with histology or multiplexed imaging.

Experience with Seurat, Scanpy, Squidpy, Giotto, Xenium Explorer, Cell Ranger, CellChat, or related spatial and single-cell analysis tools.

Experience integrating spatial transcriptomics with scRNA-seq, CODEX, flow cytometry, TCR/BCR sequencing, bulk RNA-seq, whole-exome sequencing, MRI/radiomics, or clinical outcome data.

Experience generating publication-quality figures and summaries for manuscripts, grants, and scientific presentations.

Experience with version control, reproducible workflows, data management, or high-performance computing environments.

Background in brain tumors, glioblastoma, brain metastases, tumor immunology, cancer genomics, or cancer immunotherapy.

Work generally requires a bachelor's degree in botany, biology, zoology, psychology or other directly related scientific field.

None required above education/training requirement. OR AN EQUIVALENT COMBINATION OF RELEVANT EDUCATION AND/OR EXPERIENCE

None required above education/training requirement. OR AN EQUIVALENT COMBINATION OF RELEVANT EDUCATION AND/OR EXPERIENCE

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