Be part of the innovation driving Singapore’s food safety. The Biological Research team under the Research & Exposure Science Department (RESD) develops and deploying advanced food safety research and testing capabilities to address evolving foodborne hazards. Join us in fulfilling SFA’s mission of ensuring and securing a supply of safe food for Singapore.

Duties

Officer will be expected to:

• Conduct applied biological and microbiological research, identify problem statements, generate research hypotheses, recommend technology-based solutions, and/or determine computational strategies, in support of the agency’s food safety operations, risk assessment and policies
• Perform integrative analysis on high throughput sequencing datasets related to food microbiology (e.g. genomics, transcriptomics, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics)
• Conduct phylogenetic and statistical inference to obtain biological insights from big genomic data
• Develop and implement bioinformatics pipelines for workflow automation
• Build models and classifiers for predictive analytics
• Develop and maintain databases for cataloguing large microbial genomic datasets
• Communicate research results through conference presentations, scientific publications, project reports that may be catered for different audience e.g. academia, scientists, policy makers and the general public
• Organise and maintain proper documentation of research data, scientific interpretations, and project proposals
• Provide basic bioinformatics training for in-house microbiologists
• Perform administrative support work such as procurement and preparation of research grants

Requirements

• BSc, MSc or PhD in computational biology, biological sciences, computer science, or other relevant disciplines
• At least 2 years of relevant work experience in computer programming and/or genomics analysis (WGS and metagenomics)
• Familiarity with Illumina and/or Nanopore sequencing data analysis.
• Experience with various sequence mapping, variant calling and genome assembly tools 
• Knowledge in scripting bioinformatics pipelines (Nextflow/Snakemake)
• Strong programming and debugging skills, preferably with experience in Python and R.
• Comfortable with High-Performance/Cloud computing and able to learn new programming languages and paradigms with minimal guidance
• Basic understanding of food microbiology, molecular biology, and epidemiology
• Knowledge in microbiome and/or microbial genetics would be an advantage.
• Possess peer-reviewed scientific publications in bioinformatics and/or microbiology
• Strong critical thinking, problem-solving, communication and collaborative skills
• Resilience and ability to multi-task

Other Information

• Work Location: National Centre for Food Science, Techquest, 7 International Business Park, Singapore 609919

​We regret to inform that only shortlisted candidates will be notified for the interview.

The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) is a new Statutory Board formed under the ‘Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE) to oversee food safety and security. The SFA will serve as the single point of contact for public feedback on food-related issues, and strengthen management of foodborne disease outbreaks to protect public health. The SFA will also facilitate more business-friendly regulations with oversight of all food safety policies and consolidation of food laboratory capabilities to deepen competencies in food diagnostics, and research and development in food safety.