Postdoc position in Artificial Intelligence-based Drug Design
    Available Montpellier (october 2021), France, 18 months

Keywords
    Drug design, Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence

Overview and challenges
    The development of artificial intelligence (AI) is a revolution in many areas. 
    Its application in the design of new pharmaceutical products is still in its infancy but is in full development.
    The main application of AI in the medical field has primarily been used in the processing of metadata generated during the clinical development of drug candidates. Biomolecule design assistance is more recent and there are several types of approaches. 
    The most common is: identifying favorable parameters in a list of active compounds and then trying to find them by screening commercial databases. 
    In this approach, new structures are not generated, only a repositioning strategy is used. The second more ambitious approach is to go through the generation of new structures. 
    To date, the number of examples in the literature is very limited. This strategy is based on the analysis of active compounds in the literature to extract the structural data necessary for the activity to allow the generation of new molecules. 
    The main pitfall of this approach is to take into account the biological activities which can be very variable according to the experimental conditions and which can lead to introducing erroneous data into the system. 
    In addition, the rare examples of this approach are not all validated by a biological model or lead to the generation of chemically questionable structures.
    This multidisciplinary project aims to provide an alternative approach to the design of biomolecules for therapeutic purposes through the assistance of a method based on artificial intelligence approaches such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) or Autoencoders.

Expected profile
    We are looking for a Postdoc of 18 months with experience in machine and deep learning. The candidate will demonstrate aptitudes or matches with most of the following aspects:
        - A PhD in Computer Science 
        - An established research record
        - High motivation for scientific research
        - Strong background in deep learning
        - Strong programming skills (e.g. Python, PyTorch) and prior development experience with real-world and benchmark data 
        - Good communication skills in English (both oral and written)
        - Chemical knowledge will be appreciated

Application
    Applications for this position will be received EXCLUSIVELY in a single PDF document containing your name in its title accessible for download via email sent to the three supervisors. Please avoid attached documents and include links if you would like to send an additional document. The subject of the email must be “Application for Post doc position in Artificial Intelligence-based Drug Design”.

Required documents are:
    - A curriculum vitae
    - A motivation letter describing your interest in the position and the matches with the expected profile
    - A link to your phd thesis and relevant related publications
    - Names and contact details of referees and / or letters of recommendation
    - Other useful information

Contract 
    The successful candidate will be employed by the University of Montpellier for a 18 months period of time (~ 2200€/month). Social security and benefits are included.

Collaboration
    - Institute of Biomolecules Max Mousseron
    - LIRMM - Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics of Montpellier

Contacts
    - Pascal Poncelet, full professor at University Montpellier, pascal.poncelet@lirmm.fr
    - Jérôme Azé, full professor at University Montpellier, jerome.aze@lirmm.fr
    - Sandra Bringay, full professor at Paul Valéry University Montpellier, sandra.bringay@lirmm.fr