[Hiring] Scientific Lead, Multi-omics @American Heart Association

Role Description

The American Heart Association has an excellent opportunity for a Scientific Lead, Multi-Omics, working with The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI)®. This position can be home-based and is a full-time, benefits-eligible, grant-funded opportunity. Funding will expire one year from the start date.

The Scientific Lead, Multi-Omics drives demand for PTFI tools and data while leading laboratory expansion, enablement, and technical support across the global ecosystem. The role also contributes to analysis and translation of multi-omics datasets including advancing clinically relevant thresholds to expand adoption and application of PTFI findings across research, clinical, and food system contexts.

Reporting to the Executive Director of Sustainable Food Systems @ Heart, this role provides scientific leadership to ensure scalable development and implementation of PTFI’s standardized multi-omics methodologies for food composition analysis and food–health research.

Global Lab Network Expansion

• Identify, assess, and engage high-capacity analytical laboratories to join the PTFI global ecosystem.
• Conduct technical evaluations of prospective institutions, including instrumentation, workflows, personnel capacity, and infrastructure.
• Support scientific due diligence for laboratory partnerships, contracts, and agreements.
• Strengthen adoption of standardized PTFI tools, protocols, and datasets across academic, nonprofit, healthcare, and industry partners.
• Contribute to growing global demand for PTFI’s standardized multi-omics tools and datasets through scientific partnerships and ecosystem engagement.

Multi-Omics Scientific Leadership for Food & Human Biospecimens

• Serve as in-house subject matter expert on multi-omics methodologies for food biomolecular characterization and human biospecimen analysis.
• Contribute to planning strategies for analytical method development including prioritization for method development of new and/or updated PTFI analytical platforms.
• Provide scientific guidance on metabolomics and related omics platforms supporting food composition and translational food–health research.
• Guide harmonization of analytical workflows, quality control frameworks, and technical standards across participating laboratories.
• Support integration of food composition data with human biological datasets in collaborative research contexts.
• Contribute to analysis and interpretation of multi-omics datasets to identify biomarkers and biologically meaningful patterns across foods and human biospecimens.

Laboratory Enablement & Capacity Strengthening

• Work with the PTFI Lab Enablement Team to implement standardized tools and protocols across the laboratory network.
• Provide technical guidance and troubleshooting support to ecosystem laboratories.
• Coordinate with instrumentation vendors, software providers, and technical service partners to optimize analytical performance and capacity.
• Partner with Food EDU to integrate training resources into lab enablement and workforce development.
• Monitor adoption of standardized workflows and support reproducibility and quality improvement across laboratories.

Platform Integration & Translational Alignment

• Collaborate with data science and AI teams to ensure multi-omics outputs are harmonized and interoperable across food and health datasets.
• Support integration of laboratory outputs into PTFI databases, analytics tools, and translational platforms.
• Contribute to workflows linking food composition data with human biomarker and clinical research applications.

External Engagement & Scientific Contribution

• Represent PTFI in technical discussions with academic, nonprofit, healthcare, and industry partners.
• Contribute to grant proposals, technical reports, and scientific publications.
• Support communications articulating the scientific value of multi-omics approaches for food and health research.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree with relevant experience.
• PhD in Analytical Chemistry, Food Chemistry, Biochemistry, Clinical Sciences, or related field strongly preferred.
• Minimum 3+ years of experience in multi-omics or analytical chemistry research; 5+ years of experience preferred.
• Expertise in mass spectrometry-based platforms (LC-MS/MS required) with an emphasis on nontargeted approaches.
• Experience applying omics approaches to food composition analysis and/or human biospecimens in clinical or translational research contexts.
• Experience with laboratory method development, validation, and quality control.
• Experience in multi-institutional or collaborative scientific environments.
• Familiarity with food systems research and nutrition science preferred.
• Industry, commercialization, or business development experience a plus.

Requirements

• Deep understanding of metabolomics workflows, data processing pipelines, and QA/QC best practices.
• Familiarity with data harmonization, metadata standards, and reproducibility principles across distributed labs.
• Ability to translate complex analytical outputs across food and human biological datasets.
• Strong analytical and systems-oriented thinker.
• Ability to bridge scientific depth with operational execution.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to collaborate across interdisciplinary teams.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-growing, mission-driven environment.
• Ability to travel 10% of the time per year.

Compensation & Benefits

• The expected pay range will be $100,000 to $115,000. Pay is commensurate with experience; geographic differentials to the pay range may apply.
• Our goal is to ensure you have a competitive base salary.
• You are rewarded for achieving success through annual salary planning and incentive programs.
• We offer a wide array of benefits including medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance.
• Robust retirement program that includes an employer match and automatic contribution.
• Employee assistance program, employee wellness program, telemedicine, and medical consultation.
• Paid Time Off (PTO) at a minimum of 16 days per year for new employees.
• A total of 12 paid holidays off each year.
• Tuition Assistance program for career development.