Center of Excellence for Data-Driven Discovery

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital's journey into data science started with genomic studies and their associated clinical data. Today, there are an estimated 150 petabytes of biological data from open sources, including genomic and gene expression information; protein and cellular data; chemical biology data; and human genetics, systems biology and clinical data. The explosion of structural data in recent years has increased both the complexity and sheer amount of biological information available to scientists. The challenge is to integrate and derive actionable information from these large and diverse datasets.

M. Madan Babu, Ph.D., joined the St. Jude Structural Biology Department in July 2020 as the George J. Pedersen Endowed Chair in Biological Data Sciences and director of the Center of Excellence for Data-Driven Discovery.

Dr. Babu's group has pioneered data science-based approaches to make biological discoveries and reveal fundamental principles in biological systems. His group has developed state-of-the-art computational and machine learning-based methods to interrogate large-scale biological data from diverse organisms. Dr. Babu’s group investigates biological systems at different scales of complexity: from systems at the atomic level (e.g., structures) to the network of interactions between molecules (e.g., protein interaction networks) to the level of an entire population (e.g., variation in the human population and cancer genomes).

We are always looking for highly driven and talented individuals who are motivated to explore the intersection between data science and biology in a multidisciplinary and diverse working environment. 

The Babu group strives to build and maintain a culture of respect, diversity and inclusion. We strongly feel these values directly contribute to the dynamic and intellectually stimulating scientific environment we can provide.

For all inquiries, please contact c3djobs@stjude.org.

St Jude offers a well-defined career ladder with potential for growth and advancement. Industry-competitive salaries are based on your degree and years of experience.  

We are hiring in the following areas: cancer genetics, human genetics, omics, network biology and data science. 

We are hiring in the following areas: synthetic biology, molecular biology and cell biology.

We are looking for postdoctoral research associates to join our team. 

The Center of Excellence will soon be recruiting faculty members at the Full Member, Associate and Assistant Member level. Please watch this site for job postings. 

Consistently ranked Top 10 in the U.S. in Pediatric Cancer, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is the only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children, and home to the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project. The St. Jude campus is a truly unique research environment, encompassing state-of-the-art High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities, world-leading oncology basic research, outstanding Shared Resources and Core Facilities and a dedicated translational Chemical Biology and Therapeutics department. The $412M Advanced Research Center, opened in 2021, doubles the campus’ research space and adds support for an additional 1,000 employees. There is a vibrant data science community at St. Jude with opportunities to interact with researchers in the Biostatistics and Computational Biology departments and tremendous support from the Center for Applied Bioinformatics.

The Department of Structural Biology is building one of the world’s most comprehensive research centers for defining molecular structures to understand health and disease at the molecular level. The department is home to multiple Technology Core Centers (Cryo-EM and Tomography, X-ray, NMR, Single-Molecule Imaging, and Protein Technologies) ready to characterize data-driven discoveries.