Intern- Bioinformatics

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 doctoral student to gain hands‑on experience applying bioinformatics and machine learning approaches to real biological data within a gene therapy research environment. The intern will join the Bioinformatics and AI/Machine Learning team at AskBio and contribute to a defined project focused on the integration and analysis of AAV capsid production and sequence‑based data within AskBio’s proprietary bioinformatics platform, PromPT®. The project will emphasise data curation, exploratory analysis, and the application of existing machine learning models.

Job Responsibilities:

• Assist in identifying, collecting, and curating AAV capsid production and sequence‑related datasets from internal and public sources.
• Perform data cleaning, quality control, and exploratory data analysis.
• Support the application and evaluation of existing machine learning or statistical models related to AAV production or sequence features.
• Assist with the integration of data outputs and model results into PromPT® for downstream analysis and visualisation.
• Develop clear visualisations and summary analyses to support biological interpretation of results.
• Collaborate with bioinformaticians, ML scientists, and experimental researchers to understand project context and user needs.
• Participate in documentation, code reviews, and version‑controlled development workflows.
• Assist with testing and validation of analysis outputs.
• Communicate progress through regular discussions and updates with the project team.
• Prepare and deliver a final presentation summarising the project, methods, results, and learning outcomes.

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.