Administrative Specialist

Postdoc Position in Bioinformatics
80-100%

Start of employment: November 2025 (or by arrangement), the position is available for one year (with the possibility to extend).

The University of Bern is the third largest University in Switzerland. The position offers a world-class scientific environment with an outstanding infrastructure. Our Department at Bern University invites applications for a Post-Doctoral Research Associate to work on a innovative research project in the fields chemical biology, enzyme engineering and biocatalysis.

• Execution of innovative research projects in the field chemical biology, enzyme engineering and biocatalysis
• Application and development of novel methods to leverage protein structure data for enzyme engineering
• Implementing and utilizing state-of-the-art machine learning methods to gain insights from enzyme sequence/structure- activity relationships for improved experimental design
• Statistical analysis of enzyme engineering data to validate experimental quality
• Developing and expanding relevant laboratory infrastructure and bioinformatics workflows
• Supervision of internships, Bachelor’s and Master’s thesis

• PhD in bioinformatics, chemistry, biochemistry, computational biology, protein design, drug design/discovery or Master’s degree with 3+ years of experience in a comparable working environment
• Working knowledge of state-of-the-art bioinformatics for protein-ligand complex modeling, small molecule and macromolecular docking as well as the visualization and analysis of protein structures and complexes. Experience in molecular dynamics (MD) or quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) simulations as well as experience with Rosetta/PyRosetta is a plus.
• Strong background in statistics and ability to apply it to experimental design or large dataset analysis.
• Experience in algorithm design and utilizing domain-relevant machine learning frameworks is a plus (e.g. protein LMs (ESM, ProtTrans), PyTorch, scikit-learn)
• Experience in carrying out multiple sequence alignments, phylogenetic reconstruction, sequence similarity networks as well as processing, quality control and statistical analysis of internal and external biological datasets including Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) data is a plus
• Proficiency in programming (preferably Python3). Knowledge of versioning, package managing and containerization (e.g. Git, conda & Docker) and working knowledge with Unix-based systems (e.g. Ubuntu) and on HPC-infrastructures is a plus.
• Fluency in oral and written English

• Multi-facetted and interesting range of tasks with further education opportunities
• Progressive employment and social security provisions in accordance with cantonal guidelines
• Central location