Associate Director, Immunology, Infectious Disease

The Role:

The Infectious Diseases group at Moderna is seeking a talented, experienced, and motivated Associate Director for Computational Immunology. The candidate will be part of a team focused on the development of computational tools and statistical modeling approaches aimed at integrating disparate immunological data to understand mRNA sensing, immunogenicity, and correlates of immunity. The ideal candidate must have extensive experience in biomarker discovery and immune correlates analysis, and a proven track records of leadership in driving computational projects. The candidate will participate in assay and study design, automation of immune data analysis, and lead a team of computational immunologists that will build new analytical strategies to probe the impact of mRNA technologies on shaping immunity. The ultimate goal of the position will be to develop immune-appropriate computational tools able to help guide the development of next generation mRNA vaccines. This work also seeks to define the molecular mechanisms that lead to protection against individual pathogens to help inspire iterative vaccine improvement. The candidate will interface with collaborators and present results both internally and externally. The ability to effectively communicate across internal multi-disciplinary teams and with external partners is required. Applicants should be outstanding scientists, collaborative team members, excellent communicators, and should be excited to work with cutting edge mRNA technology in the advancement of vaccines against unmet infectious and non-infectious disease threats.

Heres What Youll Do:

• Lead a team of highly skilled computational immunologist and data scientists.

• Develop automated analytics pipelines for data collection, processing, harmonization, analysis, and visualization from disparate multi-scale, high-dimensional immunological data types.

• Work collaboratively with teams to develop data reporting structures.

• Work collaboratively with teams to define immunological data strategies and to manage multiple complex research plans to achieve the team objectives.

• Lead the design of scientific experiments, communicate the strategic approach, and interpret the analysis results.

• Establish a cloud-based centralized computing platform for lab-data management and data analysis.

• Develop advanced machine-learning/AI strategies in combination with systems biology approaches to understand interactomes, immunogenicity, correlates of protection and mechanism of action.

• Develop computational tools to understand cross-species immunogenicity/correlates.

• Lead a team seeking to develop/evaluate different tools and to explore the public databases to not only support Immunology/Infectious Disease but also drive innovation in vaccine design.

• Assist in the identification of new targets for vaccine intervention and/or monoclonal antibody discovery.

• Review literature for relevant immune screening approaches and for new technology with application to infectious disease research.

• Develop relationships with additional bioinformatics efforts across the organization.

• Work collaboratively with internal and external cross-functional teams and collaborators to align, plan and execute on the overall research projects and development plans.

• Lead to maintain compliance with requirements for data integrity, analysis reproducibility, and data/code management.

Heres What Youll Bring to the Table:

• Exceptional PhD with expertise in computational immunology is required. Knowledge of computational biology, immunology, and virology is required.

• 3-5 years of independent research experience in biotech, academia, or NGO is required.

• Strong level of understanding of computational immunology and vaccine profiling is required.

• Strong level of understanding and expertise in designing and analyzing immune-related studies and assays.

• Extensive experience in integrating distinct data types.

• Expertise in immune correlates analysis across pathogen is necessary.

• Excellent programming skills across multiple languages such as Python, R, Perl and Matlab.

• Strong experience in cloud-based parallel computing environment and data science development platforms, such as GitHub/GitLab, Jupyter, R shiny, Anaconda, and Docker, is required.

• Extensive experience applying/developing multivariate statistical approaches such as machine learning, and deep learning tools to model biological data is required.

• Contributions to high impact publications and presentations in the field of immunology or vaccinology.

• The ability to work in a cross-functional work environment is critical; strong leadership skills and independence skills are expected.

• Excellent written, presentation and interpersonal communication skills; ability to influence and collaborate in a team environment.

• Candidate will be curious in exploring new path for drug discovery, bold in proposing creative experimental designs and ideas. Will work collaboratively with multifunctional teams and will be relentless in pursuing successful outcomes.

Moderna is pleased to provide you and your family with a comprehensive and innovative suite of benefits, including:

• Highly competitive and inclusive medical, dental and vision coverage options
• Flexible Spending Accounts for medical expenses and dependent care expenses
• Lifestyle Spending Account funds to help you engage in personal enrichment and self-care activities
• Family care benefits, including subsidized back-up care options and on-demand tutoring
• Free premium access to fitness, nutrition, and mindfulness classes
• Exclusive preferred pricing on Peloton fitness equipment
• Adoption and family-planning benefits
• Dedicated care coordination support for our LGBTQ+ community
• Generous paid time off, including:
  Vacation, sick time and holidays
  Volunteer time to participate within your community
  Discretionary winter shut down
  Paid sabbatical after 5 years; every 3 years thereafter
• Generous Paid Leave offerings, including 18 weeks of 100% paid parental leave for all new parents
• 401k match and Financial Planning tools
• Moderna-paid Life, LTD and STD insurance coverages, as well as voluntary benefit options
• Complimentary concierge service including home services research, travel booking, and entertainment requests
• Free parking or subsidized commuter passes
• Location-specific perks and extras!

Candidates should be aware that Moderna currently maintains a policy requiring all US-based employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and receive a booster shot once eligible. Newly hired employees must be vaccinated and boosted prior to their employment start date. Moderna is an equal opportunity employer and will provide a reasonable accommodation to those unable to be vaccinated or receive a booster where it is not an undue hardship to the company to do so as provided under federal, state, and local law.

About Moderna

In over 10 years since its inception, Moderna has transformed from a research-stage company advancing programs in the field of messenger RNA (mRNA), to an enterprise with a diverse clinical portfolio of vaccines and therapeutics across seven modalities, a broad intellectual property portfolio in areas including mRNA and lipid nanoparticle formulation, and an integrated manufacturing plant that allows for rapid clinical and commercial production at scale. Moderna maintains alliances with a broad range of domestic and overseas government and commercial collaborators, which has allowed for the pursuit of both groundbreaking science and rapid scaling of manufacturing. Most recently, Moderna's capabilities have come together to allow the authorized use and approval of one of the earliest and most effective vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moderna's mRNA platform builds on continuous advances in basic and applied mRNA science, delivery technology and manufacturing, and has allowed the development of therapeutics and vaccines for infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular diseases and autoimmune diseases. Moderna has been named a top biopharmaceutical employer by Science for the past seven years. To learn more, visit www.modernatx.com.

Moderna is a smoke-free, alcohol-free and drug-free work environment.

Moderna is committed to equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination for all employees and qualified applicants without regard to a persons race, color, gender, age, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation or any characteristic protected under applicable law. Moderna will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities, in accordance with applicable law.

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