Research Assistant

One of Canada's Top 10 Research Hospitals, Sunnybrook Research Institute is developing innovations in care for the more than 1.3 million patients the hospital cares for annually.

Sunnybrook Research Institute is the research enterprise of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, a teaching hospital fully affiliated with the University of Toronto. Research spans three Toronto-based campuses, eight programs and three scientific platforms. Our main aims are to understand and prevent disease, and to develop treatments that enhance and extend life. Our vision is to invent the future of health care. Each year, we conduct about $100 million in research across 500,000 square feet, including in the world’s first Centre for Research in Image-Guided Therapeutics.

The Ottoy & Goubran labs at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, University of Toronto, are seeking a motivated Research Assistant to work on a range of projects at the intersection of Alzheimer’s disease, cerebrovascular disease, and neuroinflammation. Our interdisciplinary teams lead the computational and neuroimaging analyses for several cutting-edge imaging studies and clinical trials at Sunnybrook focused on Alzheimer’s disease. You will be involved with a broad range of tasks, including the computational analysis of our recently funded CIHR project (focused on developing new imaging biomarkers and studying the intersection between vascular dysfunction and pathology in Alzheimer’s disease). Other tasks will include processing/statistical analysis of medical images (MRI and PET), optimizing computational pipelines, building an imaging database, maintaining repositories, leveraging cutting-edge techniques to analyze biomarkers (including 7T MRI), and contributing to publications. We collaborate with a diverse and multidisciplinary team of researchers, including computer scientists, physicists, neurologists, radiologists, and psychologists, within a dynamic and collegial environment.

**Key Responsibilities**:

- Management and analysis of human neuroimaging data, including structural, functional, and diffusion MRI, and PET.
- Developing and optimizing neuroimaging pipelines and computational tools to analyze data from various dementia cohorts, including those from our international collaborators.
- Contributing to research projects, international collaborations, grant writing, and publishing papers.
- Presenting at conferences and workshops.

**Qualifications**:

- Post-secondary degree in computer science, biomedical engineering, bioinformatics, computational neuroscience, or a related discipline (M.Sc. preferred).
- Computer programming experience, with demonstrated skills in Python.

- Intermediate knowledge of Linux, including shell scripting.
- Proven ability to work independently as well as collaboratively.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English.

**Assets**:

- Python software packaging, virtual environments, Anaconda/Conda, Jupyter/IPython.
- Working knowledge of neuroimaging software and toolkits (e.g., Freesurfer, FSL, ITK, MRtrix).
- Experience with systems architecture/imaging databases for computational pipeline design.
- Experience with version control systems, such as Git.
- Prior research experience (course-based allowed).
- Experience with biostatistics/statistical analysis and R or equivalent software.
- Experience with Machine Learning model development and evaluation.

**In accordance with Canadian Employment and Immigration guidelines, applicants must be eligible to work in Canada. In accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, this advertisement is directed initially to Canadian citizens and permanent residents, however, everyone is encouraged to apply.**:
**Sunnybrook Research Institute is committed to providing accessible employment practices that are in compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). If you require accommodation for disability during any stage of the recruitment process, please indicate this in your cover letter.**:
**Sunnybrook Research Institute is strongly committed to inclusion and diversity within its community and welcomes all applicants including but not limited to: visible minorities, all religions and ethnicities, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ2S+ persons, and all others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.**:
**Links**:

- University of Toronto
- Sunnybrook Research Institute
- Dr. Ottoy’s research profile and spotlight
- Dr. Goubran’s website of the Artificial Intelligence and COmputational NeuroSciences (AICONS) lab
- Dr. Goubran’s Department of Medical Biophysics Profile
- Temerty Faculty of Medicine
- Black Centre for Brain Resilience & Recovery