AI/ML Bioinformatician (Postdoctoral Fellow)

The NLM is one of the 27 institutes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NLM is the world’s largest biomedical library and a leader in research, development, and training in biomedical informatics and health information technology.

The DIR within the NLM has two primary research areas: computational health research and computational biology. In computational health research, our efforts center on natural language processing (NLP), clinical image analysis, biomedical ontologies, information modeling, and clinical data analytics. In computational biology, we emphasize transcriptional regulation, chromatin and network biology, structural and functional analysis, sequence statistics, and evolutionary genomics.

Dr. Ovcharenko’s research group develops AI/ML and statistical approaches to study epigenetic and sequence-based mechanisms of gene regulation. Current projects focus on deciphering the regulatory landscape of the human genome by integrating AI-driven enhancer modeling with GWAS data and extensive experimental enhancer characterization. Our goal is to reveal transcriptional mechanisms underlying cell-type–specific regulatory signals and to pinpoint disease-causal noncoding mutations.

Selected recent publications:

• D. Huang et al., Super-silencers are crucial for development and carcinogenesis in B cells, Nature Communications, 2025
• D. Huang et al., The contribution of silencer variants to human diseases, Genome Biology, 2024
• S. Hudaiberdiev et al., Modeling islet enhancers using deep learning identifies candidate causal variants at loci associated with T2D and glycemic traits, PNAS, 2023
• S. Li et al., De novo human brain enhancers created by single-nucleotide mutations, Science Advances, 2023

Position Overview: This is a full-time postdoctoral fellow position. The initial appointment will be for one year, and is renewable on a yearly basis, with extensions up to 5 years total. The NIH offers a competitive salary (based on postdoctoral experience, see stipend tables: https://www.training.nih.gov/stipends/) and comprehensive health insurance. The NIH is dedicated to the continued education and career development of all its research staff. Candidates are subject to a background investigation. Additional information about NIH postdoctoral fellowships: https://www.training.nih.gov/research-training/pd/

Essential:

• PhD in Computational Biology, AI/ML, Computer Science, Population Genetics, Bioinformatics, or a related field
• fewer than five years of postdoctoral experience
• strong programming skills

Preferred:

• experience analyzing genomic data is highly desirable

U.S. citizens and permanent residents are eligible to apply. NIH welcomes foreign nationals with the exception of individuals from this list.