Helmholtz Zentrum München is a research center with the mission to discover personalized medical solutions for the prevention and therapy of environmentally triggered diseases and promote a healthier society in a rapidly changing world.
At our institute you will find a scientifically stimulating international environment. Together with renowned scientists and supported by an excellent infrastructure you will have the opportunity to make an important contribution for a healthier society.
Primary research activity of the Structure-based Drug Discovery Group is to identify new potential drugs with focus on protein-protein interaction and new targets scouting. Protein-protein interactome usually require compounds of unique chemical properties seldom found in contemporary screening libraries. We are developing AI tools to identify new chemical substances and test them in biological systems. With the help of AI, fragment-based screening, NMR-based SAR evaluation, and X-ray crystallography, we design molecules that can serve as a chemical probe to validate novel therapeutic proof of concept and can be optimized into future drug candidates.
We are working within the Institute of Structural Biology at the Helmholtz Zentrum München. It focuses on integrative structural biology and structure-based drug discovery, combining structural biology, NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance), crystallography, cryo-EM, computational approaches, and chemical synthesis to develop and apply novel approaches beyond current state-of-the-art for the discovery of new targets and therapeutic small molecules. Therapeutic targets address a range of topics, ranging from diabetes, cancer, lung disease to targets in parasitic diseases and antibiotic resistance.
Postdoc / staff scientist (f/m/x) in computer-aided, structure-based drug discovery
100798
Full time, close to full time
Neuherberg near Munich
Postdocs
Your responsibilities
We are looking for very motivated candidates to work in a transdisciplinary team. Your essential duties will be:
- Creating new, machine learning models to interpret and analyze multidimensional structural and chemical data
- Cooperating tightly with medicinal chemists and structural biologists that provide their experience and validate computational predictions experimentally
- Solving complex protein-drug interaction problems together with the quantum chemists and molecular dynamics specialists
- Writing of scientific papers and patents
- Training young researchers in AI / ML techniques
Your qualifications
- Essential skills:
- Demonstrated experience in developing software packages (in python, confirmed by online repositories)
- Good understanding of modern deep learning techniques including convolutional transformer, and other models
- Data science skills: data curation / cleaning, ensuring independence of cross-validation / test datasets, redundancy reduction, dealing with dataset imbalance, redundancy reduction and other preprocessing techniques
- Experience with HPC: parallelization of jobs, usage of GPUs
- Knowledge of containers (Singularity)
- Excellent team spirit, presentation, and communication skills
- Preferred skills:
- Doctoral or Master degree related to the assignment (Computation, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Information technology)
- Knowledge of bioinformatics, structural biology, molecular dynamics, computational chemistry
- Experience in C++ / C# or other advanced programming languages
- Graphical interfaces and 3D graphics (Unity / Unreal etc.)
What we offer you
- Continuous education and training
- Work-life balance
- Flexible working hours and working-time models
- 30 days annual leave
- On-site health management service
- Home office options
- On-site nursery
- Elder care
- Company pension scheme
- Discounted public transport ticket
Munich, with its numerous lakes and its vicinity to the Alps, is considered to be one of the cities with the best quality of life worldwide. With its first-class universities and world-leading research institutions it offers an intellectually stimulating environment.
Remuneration and social benefits are based on the collective wage agreement for public sector employees at federal level (TV EntgO Bund). The position is (initially) limited until February 28, 2023, but under certain circumstances an extension can be arranged.
To promote diversity, we welcome applications from talented people regardless of cultural background, nationality, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity, physical abilities, religion, and age. Qualified applicants with physical disabilities will be given preference.
Interested?
If you have further questions, simply contact Dr. Grzegorz Popowicz, +49 (0) 89 3187-3727, who will be happy to be of assistance.
Helmholtz Zentrum München
Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Gesundheit und Umwelt (GmbH)
Institute of Structural Biology
Ingolstädter Landstraße 1
85764 Oberschleißheim
Award for excellent gender equality policy for women and men. Helmholtz Zentrum München is particularly committed to promoting professional equality between women and men. It therefore aims to increase the proportion of the underrepresented sex in the respective field.
The Helmholtz Zentrum München is part of the Helmholtz Association, Germany’ largest scientific organization. Altogether 42,000 people currently work in its 19 scientific-technical and biological-medical research centers. The Association’s annual budget amounts to around 5 billion euros.
