Join Us!

Honours undergrad research students, and graduate students interested in any of our projects should contact Fiona Brinkman directly at brinkman@sfu.ca.

For other positions listed below, see the instructions associated with each position. See also further information below for applicants.

The Brinkman lab is committed to providing a positive research/working environment supporting growth and flexibility. Simon Fraser is located in a beautiful conservation area in metro Vancouver with access to a wide range of recreational opportunities. Contact us to learn more!

Postdoctoral positions

Would you like to use diverse CHILD Cohort Study data to better understand which early life exposures and gut microbiota support health?

Associated with the Omics Data Science Initiative at Simon Fraser University, and significant funding recently obtained, we are looking to fill a postdoctoral position associated with the national CHILD Cohort Study and CINECA, in collaboration with Sick Kids Hospital, universities across 7 provinces, and an international network of researchers spanning North America, Europe and Africa.

Please quote the job code below in the subject line of any email you send regarding a position. For more customized potential projects based on the larger range of research projects we have, you may quote the more general ODSI-2022PD.

“BRI-2022CHILD2” – CIHR/European Commission/Genome Canada CHILD Cohort Study and CINECA projects, led by Fiona Brinkman with national CHILD Cohort Study researchers, and researchers in the Europe and Africa, are aiming to harmonize components of microbiome and genome data and metadata in birth cohorts – linking microbiome data better to environmental exposure variables and health outcomes related to allergic disease and COVID-19. See CHILDdb.ca for more information about the CHILD Cohort Study, the largest richly phenotyped birth cohort in Canada. See also the overview description of the larger CINECA project which aims to integrate CHILD with other cohorts in Europe and Africa. Positions are suitable for researchers with strong leadership and organizational skills, and either microbiome analysis, data analytics, or data visualization experience, who are interested in performing analyses of very diverse birth cohort data, with the support of a team of database developers, and specifically leading select, targeted analyses of the data.

Qualified applicants will have a Ph.D. in a relevant biological, bioinformatics, or computational biology discipline, plus demonstrated experience in relevant research. They will have the opportunity to work with an exceptional, team-based group of interdisciplinary researchers located at SFU, and partner organizations across Canada and internationally.

Salary is based on experience and is very competitive. If you are interested, please forward a cover letter with a copy of your CV, noting start date(s) you’d prefer and contact information for two references, to the following email address, quoting the job code in the subject line of your email (“BRI-2022CHILD2” or “ODSI-2022PD” for a more customized position).

Email brinkman-jobs@sfu.ca.

We thank all applicants and regret that only those selected for an interview may be contacted further.

More information for potential applicants

The Brinkman Laboratory comprises an interdisciplinary computer lab and molecular microbiology lab environment, with access to notable additional resources, including our Computing Cluster (“Buster the Cluster”), Compute Canada resources (including the largest academic cluster in Canada: CEDAR, which is hosted at SFU, and new SFU-hosted Cloud resources), and departmental facilities. The Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry (MBB) at Simon Fraser University is housed in the South Science Building. MBB and the institute it formed from, and the Brinkman lab, has produced a significant number of prominent bioinformaticists/genomicists who have gone on to become a coordinator of NCBI’s Genbank, coordinator or instructor of the Canadian Bioinformatics Workshop, or play leadership roles in international pharmaceutical companies, public health agencies, genome sequence centres and other genomics/bioinformatics facilities. In addition to the department’s interest in genomics and bioinformatics, the university has also indicated its strong interest in fostering interdisciplinary health-related research: It formed an interdisciplinary Faculty of Health Sciences, the IRMACS (Integrated Research in the Mathematics and Computing Sciences) facility and Big Data Hub (part of our research group is located there) and SFU recently further strengthened its mandate to support interdisciplinary, engaged research through its strategic vision.

Simon Fraser University is located within wonderful greenspace within the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, approximately 5 km from the edge of the city of Vancouver (and a three hour drive north of Seattle, Washington, in the US). SFU has been consistently ranked by respected national surveys, such as Maclean’s, as one of Canada’s top three comprehensive universities for over 20 years. In the past few years SFU was listed among Canada’s top 100 employers (Mediacorp Canada); named one of Canada’s top 10 family-friendly employers (Today’s Parent magazine) and has won the YWCA’s Innovative Workplace of the Year award, among others. Note that Vancouver has been chosen as the world’s “Most Liveable City” the majority of times in the past decade by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Please see Student Central, the MBB website and SFU Bioinformatics for more information regarding graduate student admissions, M.Sc./Ph.D. degree requirements, etc. For those interested in interdisciplinary work, note that the MBB graduate program is flexible, allowing (with permission) students to take courses for their degree from other departments and even other institutions. Students interested in bioinformatics have a few options including getting accepted in the competitive SFU/UBC bioinformatics graduate program (which includes an internship program). Another option, suitable for those interested in starting on thesis work right away with a specific thesis supervisor, involves completing bioinformatics training through the MBB graduate program or newly forming Bioinformatics program, which several very high caliber students have successfully done (like Jennifer Gardy, Brinkman Lab Ph.D. student, Governor General’s Gold Medal winner for top graduate student across all SFU faculties in 2006, who is now a Deputy Director, Surveillance, Data, & Epidemiology, Gates Foundation, and occasional host of major science shows like CBC’s The Nature of Things – yeay Jenn!).

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