PhD Student - ML/AI for Protein and Antibody Design

At Roche you can show up as yourself, embraced for the unique qualities you bring. Our culture encourages personal expression, open dialogue, and genuine connections,  where you are valued, accepted and respected for who you are, allowing you to thrive both personally and professionally. This is how we aim to prevent, stop and cure diseases and ensure everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Join Roche, where every voice matters.

The Position

A healthier future. It’s what drives us to innovate. To continuously advance science and ensure everyone has access to the healthcare they need today and for generations to come. Creating a world where we all have more time with the people we love. That’s what makes us Roche.
 

Advances in AI, data, and computational sciences are transforming drug discovery and development. Roche’s Research and Early Development organisations at Genentech (gRED) and Pharma (pRED) have demonstrated how these technologies accelerate R&D, leveraging data and novel computational models to drive impact. Seamless data sharing and access to models across gRED and pRED are essential to maximising these opportunities. 

This position is located in the AI4DD Department, within the Computational Sciences Center of Excellence (CoE), a strategic unified group whose goal is to harness this transformative power of data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist our scientists in both pRED and gRED to deliver more innovative and transformative medicines for patients worldwide.

The PhD Project
 

This PhD student opportunity offers you the chance to apply AI and machine learning techniques to the design of therapeutic antibodies. You will develop novel strategies combining diffusion models and structure-informed methods to optimize antibody design, pushing the boundaries of computational biology, protein engineering, and machine learning to contribute to cutting-edge therapies.

Throughout this project, you will advance both basic science and technology in an industrial setting, while maintaining strong ties to academia. Your work will include publishing results in peer-reviewed journals, often preceded by priority patent applications where applicable.

Your Responsibility

• Apply novel Computational Biology/Machine Learning methods to address complex biological questions

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across Roche to tackle challenges in antigen-antibody structure prediction, generative design of macromolecules, and antibody optimization.

• Analyse biological data from diverse sources, providing insights to experimental biologists, bioinformaticians, and other stakeholders.
  Contribute to the development of novel computational models and algorithms to accelerate drug discovery.
  Publish research findings in scientific journals and present at both internal and external conferences.
  ​

Who you are

• MSc degree candidate or recent graduate in Bioinformatics, Statistics, Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field with a Biology background.

• Knowledge of software development and fluency in Python.

• Understanding of machine learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, Jax, TensorFlow).

• Experience with antibody informatics, protein structural modelling, and protein-protein interaction characterization. Experience in data mining methods is a plus.

• Familiarity with technologies required to undertake analyses on large data sources or with computationally intensive steps (Linux, HPC cluster computing)

• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

• Experience implementing reproducible research practices like version control (e.g., using Git) is a plus.
   

A healthier future drives us to innovate. Together, more than 100’000 employees across the globe are dedicated to advance science, ensuring everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Our efforts result in more than 26 million people treated with our medicines and over 30 billion tests conducted using our Diagnostics products. We empower each other to explore new possibilities, foster creativity, and keep our ambitions high, so we can deliver life-changing healthcare solutions that make a global impact.

Let’s build a healthier future, together.

Roche is an Equal Opportunity Employer.