Executive Director Statistical Genetics

Role Summary

The Executive Director will lead the development and evaluation of predictive models for disease, health and wellness using genomic and health data collected across 1,000,000s of human samples. The successful candidate will use these analyses to guide Regeneron in the development and application of disease predictions across several areas: (1) early research focused on identifying and evaluating actionable targets for disease treatment and prevention; (2) clinical studies that require efficient identification of at risk patients and/or effective omics assays to evaluate the success of potential interventions; and (3) develop actionable health related predictions that can help individuals and health care providers measure and improve health outcomes.

To accomplish this, they will lead and mentor a small and highly performing team of statistical geneticists. Providing advice in the design, implementation and refinement of our genetic analyses tools and ensuring that results are reviewed, interpreted and shared with key Regeneron stakeholders to facilitate optimum decision making across our target portfolio.

The Executive Director will also play a key role in advising and shaping ongoing statistical analyses of population scale datasets, which are an essential component of our target discovery and evaluation efforts.

Responsibilities

• Demonstrated ability to build, organize and lead teams of investigators executing cutting edge genomic analyses, both within an institution and across institutions. Excellent collaborative skills are required, as you will be expected to work in partnership and collaboration with many diverse scientists.
• Expertise in the application and development of computational tools that enable modern genetic analyses and exploration and interpretation of their results. It is anticipated that our datasets will include multiple years of health record data, 100,000,000s of genetic variants, and 1,000s of proteins measured across 1,000,000s of individuals.
• The Executive Director and Their team will have to construct, evaluate, validate and demonstrate the value of potential health related predictions derived from our large datasets and identify settings where they could be used to improve target identification, trial design, and/or individual health outcomes. Predictions could use health records, genetic sequence data, and omics assay results – singly or in combination.
• Expertise in human genetic analysis of genomic datasets that combine genomic scale phenotyping (such as RNA expression levels, proteomics, metabolomics, and others) with human genetic data (such as array or sequence data) on 10,000s or 100,000s of individuals.
• Expertise with genome scale analyses of human genetic data and their application to elucidate complex trait biology. Broad understanding of the challenges and opportunities at all stages of genetic association studies – ranging from design, quality control, association analysis, functional interpretation and follow-up experiments in cells and model organisms. An outstanding candidate will have demonstrated leadership in the use of sequence and genotype data to dissect complex human traits and a track record of innovation in these areas.
• Expertise with modern cloud environments is required. The candidate will routinely use advanced tools for genomic analyses, for statistical analyses and computation to execute analyses at scale and to facilitate effective annotation, sharing and collaboration. An outstanding candidate will have overseen the design and implementation of tools that enable new genetic analyses or make them more accessible.
• Critically review and provide feedback on analyses plans, results and summaries to ensure they are accurate and reliable. Identify potential problems and propose remedies or refinements. Provide vision and leadership as we seek to identify and prioritize among opportunities for carrying out human genetics at scale.
• Outstanding communication skills and an ability to summarize and present the results of large scale genetic, genomic and health-record based studies to a variety of technical audiences, ranging from experts in statistical genetics and computation to experts in biology, drug design and medicine.
• Ability to work in a highly interactive environment with a diverse team of colleagues. Ability to provide mentorship and guidance to more junior colleagues to help them develop their full potential and build new skills and abilities. The outstanding candidate will be able help teams of skilled individuals to consistently achieve high levels of motivation, enthusiasm and performance.

Qualifications

• A PhD in human genetics or a related field, in addition to 10-15 years of experience executing cutting edge human genetics experiments.
• A track record of building, organizing and leading teams with diverse skills and focused on the analysis and interpretation of human genomic data. A record of mentoring and developing talent.
• Leadership in the development and refinement of methods for the analysis of human genetic data or in their application to new problems in a creative and insightful manner. Understanding of strategies and methods for genotype imputation, haplotyping, relationship inference and/or polygenic risk score estimation.
• Demonstrated experience in developing and bringing products to market and/or working with regulators is a definite plus.