Intern- AI, Machine Learning

AskBio Inc., a wholly owned and independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG, is a fully integrated gene therapy company dedicated to developing life‑saving medicines and changing lives. The company maintains a portfolio of clinical programs across a range of neuromuscular, central nervous system, cardiovascular, and metabolic disease indications with a clinical‑stage pipeline that includes investigational therapeutics for congestive heart failure, limb‑girdle muscular dystrophy, multiple system atrophy, Parkinson’s disease, and Pompe disease.

Position Summary: This internship provides an opportunity for a highly motivated student to gain hands‑on experience applying machine learning to real biological data within a gene therapy research environment. The intern will work within the Bioinformatics and AI/Machine Learning team to integrate a next‑generation machine learning model for enhancer prediction into AskBio proprietary bioinformatics platform, PromPT®. The role will focus on building an end‑to‑end, user‑facing ML pipeline, including data ingestion, model integration, visualisation of results, and downstream biological analysis, in close collaboration with bioinformaticians and experimental scientists.

Job Responsibilities:

• Support the integration of a next‑generation machine learning model for enhancer prediction into an existing bioinformatics platform.
• Learn how machine learning models are applied to biological sequence data in a gene therapy context.
• Review and understand existing bioinformatics pipelines within the PromPT® platform.
• Partner with bioinformaticians, ML and experimental scientists to gather user requirements and feedback.
• Assist in developing a simple user interface for model input and configuration.
• Develop output visualisations and summary analyses to support biological interpretation of model results.
• Participate in code reviews, documentation, and best‑practice software development workflows.
• Assist in testing, validation, and performance assessment of the integrated pipeline.
• Communicate progress clearly through regular updates and discussions with the project team.
• Collect and analyse feedback from users to refine pipeline functionality and usability.
• Present a final demonstration of the integrated ML pipeline and its applications at the end of the internship.

Minimum Requirements:

• Must be pursuing a Doctorate degree in Informatics, Bioinformatics, Data or Computer Science, AI or Machine Learning, or a related field.
• Must have completed their first year at the time of application.
• Coursework or academic experience in one or more of the following: bioinformatics, machine learning, data science, or computational biology.
• Basic programming experience in Python or a similar scientific programming language.
• Familiarity with fundamental concepts in machine learning or statistical data analysis.
• Interest in applying computational methods to biological or genomic data.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills.
• Ability to communicate technical ideas clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Organised, curious, and eager to learn in a collaborative research environment.
• Available to work full‑time, on‑site in the Edinburgh office, during the summer internship period.

Preferred Education, Experience And Skills:

• Prior research, internship, or project experience in bioinformatics, machine learning, or data science.
• Exposure to biological sequence data (e.g. DNA, RNA, or genomic datasets).
• Familiarity with Linux or command‑line environments.
• Experience with data visualisation libraries or tools.
• Awareness of software development best practices, such as version control (e.g. Git).
• Interest in gene therapy, genomics, or computational biology research.