Researcher (PostDoc Cheminformatics) (m/f/d)

The Computational Plant Biochemistry research group at the IPB is seeking applications to fill the position as  

Researcher (PostDoc Cheminformatics) (m/f/d)

Salary group E13 TVL, full-time 100 %, initially limited until 30.09.2025 

to be filled starting 01.08.2024. 

Who we are:  

The Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB) is a non-university research institution of the Leibniz Association on the Weinberg Campus of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. As a foundation under public law, the IPB is under direct supervision of the state of Saxony-Anhalt.  

The IPB is an internationally recognized research institution and consists of four scientific Departments and additional independent research groups (approx. 200 employees, including around 40 doctoral students).  

Research at the IPB aims to understand the (bio)chemical basis of plant resilience and performance in challenging environments related to climate change. The IPB offers excellent research facilities and state-of-the-art infrastructure to study the chemical diversity, biochemical interactions and biological functions of small natural product molecules in plants and fungi (https://www.ipb-halle.de/en/). 

Research topic: 

As a cheminformatician or computer scientist, you join our research group Computational Plant Biochemistry, which, in addition to computational metabolomics and bioinformatics, also works on scientific data and data science.    

The NFDI4Chem consortium is developing standards for research data in chemistry and supporting software and infrastructure. As task area leads in NFDI4Chem we take care that research data ("the gold of the 21st century") is collected, structured and published for efficient re-use.  

Your tasks: 

• Specification, documentation and validation of metadata schemas in XML or JSON  
• Development of tools and infrastructure for the reuse of metadata and chemical data from repositories.  
• Completion of software libraries for the processing of open data formats from chemistry  
• Development of reproducible open source workflows for the processing of analytical chemistry data from the instrument to an electronic lab notebook or repository 

Your profile: 

• You hold a university degree (PhD) in Computer Science, Cheminformatics, Bioinformatics or a related topic 
• Very good knowledge of databases (including graph- and triple stores)  
• Working with and developing chemistry software (e.g. RDKit, CDK, OpenBabel) in various programming languages (e.g. Go, Java, Python, R).   
• Knowledge in the field of mass spectrometry or chemistry is clearly an advantage.

Our benefits: 

• Excellent working conditions in an international environment 
• Flexible and family-friendly working hours and possibility of home-office 
• Offer of professional training courses and measures for skill improvement 
• Compensation according to TV-L (including annual special payment) 
• Contribution to your company pension plan (VBL) 
• On-site opportunities for health promotion 

How to apply and information: 

For further information, please contact Dr. Steffen Neumann, Tel.: +49 (0) 345 5582-1770, e-mail: sneumann@ipb-halle.de. 

Please, submit a single pdf document (letter off motivation, CV, certificates, publication list, etc.) quoting reference number 2024-05 until May 3rd, 2024 to bewerbungen@ipb-halle.de. We will run online interviews with selected candidates in the 19th calendar week in 2024. 

Foreign qualifications must comply with German standards (TV-L-EntgeltO Protokollerklärung Nr. 1 Absatz 4) and be certified (equivalence test in Germany, subject to a fee) and presented to IPB Human Resources at the time of hiring: https://www.kmk.org/zab/central-office-for-foreign-education

Diversity, family and equal opportunities: 

The IPB aspires to the goal of equal opportunity, diversity, and the promotion of work-life balance as it was awarded the certificate "Total E-Quality". In addition, the IPB is a member of the nationwide company network "Success Factor Family" and of the “Diversity Charter” (Charta der Vielfalt). 

Further information can be found at: https://www.ipb-halle.de/en/institute/ 

Data protection: 

Please note, the data protection information for applicants (m/f/d) according to Article 13 and 14 GDPR on data protection processing during the application process: 

https://www.ipb-halle.de/en/career/data-protection-information-for-applicants/