Computational Science Specialist

Essential Job Duties

The primary purpose of this position is to support researchers and faculty in leveraging institutional and external high-performance computing (HPC) clusters and scientific computing resources. This role works collaboratively with research teams to enhance bioinformatics and computational research capabilities.

This position will build and maintain bioinformatics infrastructure and databases within high-performance computing environments; design and implement example bioinformatics pipelines to process and analyze large-scale genomics datasets; and develop both asynchronous and in-person training materials for graduate students, faculty, and staff on the effective use of HPC systems and bioinformatics workflows.

The role also includes mentoring and training graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in Unix, Python, shell scripting, and high-performance computing concepts to support shared research computing resources.

The Computational Science Specialist plays a critical role in enabling researchers to migrate, implement, and optimize computational workloads on institutional HPC systems as well as external resources, including national supercomputing centers and commercial cloud platforms. This position provides hands-on computational science and bioinformatics support to faculty, researchers, graduate students, and new investigators across the research community.

This position is part of an Information Technology team supporting research computing initiatives and reports to IT leadership.

Key Responsibilities

Research Computing & HPC Support

• Support researchers in migrating, configuring, and running computational workloads on institutional HPC systems, departmental computing resources, and external HPC facilities such as national supercomputing centers and cloud platforms.

• Provide ongoing computational science support to faculty, researchers, graduate students, and new users of research computing infrastructure.

• Assist faculty with developing budgets, allocations, and proposal components related to access to HPC and advanced computing resources.

• Partner closely with research groups and campus units to support computational initiatives.

• Support bioinformatics workflows, scientific software, data analysis, visualization, and training efforts.

Bioinformatics & Data Science Support

• Provide expertise in bioinformatics computing, including pipeline development, optimization, and troubleshooting.

• Support analysis of diverse biological data types, including next-generation sequencing (NGS) and phenotypic data.

• Assist with scientific analysis, data visualization, and interpretation of modeled or measured datasets.

• Develop example code, templates, workflows, and documentation to support reproducible research practices.

Software, Workflows, & Infrastructure

• Maintain and install scientific software and bioinformatics tools in HPC environments.

• Develop, deploy, and maintain containers using platforms such as Docker and Apptainer (Singularity).

• Maintain knowledge of workflow management systems, virtual machines, and container orchestration approaches.

• Design and maintain databases to store and manage biological datasets, ensuring accessibility and long-term sustainability.

Visualization & Web Applications

• Provide expertise and example code for data visualization using commonly used scientific visualization tools.

• Support the development of interactive and reactive web applications for research dissemination, including applications built with frameworks such as Shiny.

• Assist researchers in building databases and research-facing websites where appropriate.

Training & Documentation

• Create and deliver custom training modules, workshops, and documentation on research computing, bioinformatics, and data analysis topics.

• Promote skills development and computational literacy for graduate students and early-career researchers.

• Contribute to shared knowledge bases and user guides supporting scientific computing initiatives.

Collaboration & Service

• Collaborate closely with computational researchers, faculty, and research staff across disciplines.

• Support broader scientific computing initiatives within the IT organization as needed.

• Serve as a liaison between researchers and IT to enhance research computing services and infrastructure.