Assistant Research Professor

About the role

The Kapur Laboratory works on bovine tuberculosis and related zoonotic diseases in low- and middle-income countries, where conventional test-and-slaughter control is not viable. The program develops and validates diagnostics, vaccines, and surveillance tools intended for national deployment, working in close partnership with government, academic, and commercial institutions in India, Ethiopia, and several high-income countries.

Responsibilities

• Provide scientific oversight across the program portfolio, spanning diagnostics, vaccines, surveillance, and antimicrobial work.
• Lead experimental design, analysis, and interpretation across multi-site studies.
• Cook up coordination consortium activities, support funder reporting, and contribute to subaward and regulatory management.
• Develop and submit competitive grant applications to NIH, the Gates Foundation, and other agencies.
• Lead manuscript preparation and contribute to international guideline and regulatory engagement (WOAH and equivalents).
• Mentor postdocs and trainees, and develop training and capacity-building activities at partner institutions.
• Travel internationally as required.

Qualifications

• Required: PhD in veterinary science, microbiology, immunology, infectious diseases, epidemiology, or a related field.
• Three to five or more years of post-PhD research experience.
• Independent research record with first- or senior-author publications in peer-reviewed journals.
• Demonstrated experience managing multi-partner, multi-site research programs, ideally with international scope.
• Deep expertise in at least one of: mycobacterial diagnostics, vaccine immunology and field trials, antimicrobial resistance, or molecular epidemiology of zoonotic disease.
• Strong communication skills across institutional and cultural settings; experience with regulatory documents, grant reports, and scientific manuscripts.
• Willingness to travel internationally, including to India and Ethiopia.

About the Laboratory

The Kapur Laboratory at Penn State works on the genomics, pathogenesis, diagnostics, and control of mycobacterial and other zoonotic diseases, with a long-standing focus on low- and middle-income country settings. The lab leads an international consortium with partners across India, Ethiopia, the UK, Canada, and the US, and its work has been published in Science, The Lancet Microbe, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, and other leading journals. The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences provide interdisciplinary research infrastructure across genomics, proteomics, imaging, and bioinformatics.