Germplasm Data Coordinator
The Organization
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT® (www.cimmyt.org), is a not-for-profit research and training organization with partners in over 100 countries, and through offices in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Through strong science and effective partnerships, we create, share, and use knowledge and agricultural technologies to increase food security, improve the productivity and profitability of farming systems, and sustain natural resources in developing countries.
We participate in an extensive global network of people and organizations who share similar research and development goals, including the public and private sector, nongovernmental and civil society organizations, farmers, and the development assistance community.
The incumbent will work under the supervision of the Director of the Global Maize Program (GMP) of CIMMYT, and will act as an interface between individual researchers, project collaborators, software engineers, and clients of CIMMYT-derived knowledge/products.
She/he will also assist CIMMYT scientists and partners in handling and processing large molecular and phenotypic streams for analysis.
As members of CIMMYT, the incumbent will work with a dynamic group of knowledge managers, biometricians, software engineers, molecular geneticists and crop scientists.
Job Responsibilities
- • Establishing data standards, documentation, data curation processes, time lines for data entry into institutional data bases/repositories, in agreement with the CIMMYT knowledge management strategy
- • Coordinating the receipt, storage, manipulation and quality control of field and molecular data for CIMMYT staff enabling accurate data tracking and documentation throughout the analysis pipeline.
- • Participating in the design, development and population of versatile institutional databases/repositories, interfaces and output tools.
- • Introduce new informatics tools to scientist and research assistants and project collaborators provide on-the-job training, and report back user requirements to CIMMYT software engineers.
- • Managing and documenting the dissemination of data (raw and analyzed) to co-operators within CIMMYT and with partner organizations.
- • Liaising between researchers who want to make use of own and cross institutional databases, knowledge management specialists, biometricians and software engineers at CIMMYT.
- • Interpreting data summaries to determine accuracy and validity of data.
- • Testing user-friendly software tools for molecular and trial data capture, storage and analysis.
- • Managing and providing feedback to software engineers to help to improve functionality.
Job Qualifications
- • M.Sc. in biological science, molecular biology, plant breeding, genetics, agricultural statistics or related fields.
- • Minimum of 2-3 years’ experience in developing and/or using bioinformatics tools for the management of large volume data sets.
- • Strong analytical skills with attention to details.
- • Ability to investigate and analyze with minimum supervision research activities within CIMMYT’s research programs to make them more efficient by using IT resources.
- • Ability to work and communicate with knowledge management specialists, biometricians and software engineers at CIMMYT.
Personal attributes
- Good interpersonal skills and a strong desire to support the delivery of improved, products, tools and services to team members and collaborators.
- Excellent English skills.
- Ability to work well as part of multidisciplinary and multicultural teams.
Terms of Offer
The position will be on local terms. Salary and perquisites paid in local currency are highly competitive. Appointment is on a three (3) years’ contract subject to a six-month probation period, satisfactory performance and adequate funding.
Position will be based at CIMMYT’s office in Nairobi, but will interact with all CIMMYT´s experimental stations and regional offices (country and world-wide) on a regular basis.
ICRAF and CIMMYT offer a collegial and gender-sensitive environment. Applicants are invited to send a cover letter illustrating their suitability for the above position against the listed qualifications/competencies/skills and a detailed curriculum vitae, with names and addresses of three referees (including telephone, fax numbers and email address).
All correspondence should be addressed to the Human Resources Unit, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), P.O. Box 30677, Nairobi, Kenya; OR via email: icrafhru@cgiar.org. Applications will be considered until October 19, 2012.
Qualified women are particularly encouraged to apply. Please indicate your advertisement source in your application.
Only shortlisted applicants meeting the above requirements will be contacted.
We invite you to learn more about ICRAF and CIMMYT by accessing our web sites www.cimmyt.org and www.worldagroforestry.org
