Data Science Intern

Internship Description

The Data Science Intern will support a research project using paired genomic and health data from gorillas and meerkats to identify genetic predictors of health conditions, including cardiomyopathy. Due to the shared occurrence of cardiomyopathy in both humans and managed non-human primates, as well as their close evolutionary relationship, studying the biology of this condition in non-human primates can help us understand the genetic predictors of cardiomyopathy in humans, while removing variables commonly confounding in human studies such as smoking and differential access to healthcare

The internship will be for 16 weeks (640 hours) will receive training in computational genomics and gain experience with the full lifecycle of scientific genomics research. The position is through Zoo New England but will be based at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Internship duties will include:

-Processing and managing large, next-generation genomic datasets.

-Working on a computer server using Unix environments and shell scripting.

-Performing genomic data processing, quality control, and genotyping.

-Conducting genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to investigate genetic predictors of cardiomyopathy.

-Developing and applying statistical models to genomic and health data, primarily in R.

-Creating clear visualizations of genomic and statistical results.

-Using GitHub to document, track, and manage analytical code.

-Reviewing results with research mentors and contributing to their scientific interpretation.

-Documenting methods and findings for presentations, reports, and scientific manuscripts.

-Collaborating with researchers at the Center for Zoonomics and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

-Potentially contributing as a co-author to a scientific publication.

Qualifications:

• Must be a resident of Massachusetts
• Masters
  degree in bioinformatics or related field is required
• Experience working with
  genomic data.