Within recent years, it has become evident that non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play numerous important roles in the cell. Many ncRNAs contain a characteristic RNA structure, a hallmark that (albeit often at a high computational cost) can be exploited by in silico screens. These screens are in essence based on a search for RNA secondary structures. The goals of the Ph.D. project is to design methods to conduct in particular local structural alignments of RNA structures to be exploited for structure search in genomic sequence as well as structural clustering of the RNAs.The project will be carried out in collaboration with people in the Center for non-coding RNA in Technology and Health.

Qualification requirements
The applicant should hold professional as well as personal skills and qualifications as stated below:
* A master degree in Bioinformatics, computational biology, biology or similar.
* Basic knowledge of biological sequences.
* Experience with algorithm development.
* Experience with Perl or Python (or similar)
* Experience with one (or more) of C, C++ or Java.
* It is an advantage (but not a requirement) to have general knowledge about RNA structure and folding, RNA gene search algorithms and algorithms for structural alignment or RNAs.
* The Ph.D. candidate should also possess good interpersonal skills.

Scholarship Application Deadline: February 1st, 2011

Further Scholarship Information and Application