Postdoctoral Fellow

Banner Position Number R10910

About the role

The Xu Lab in the Department of Biomedical Sciences is seeking a motivated and skilled Postdoctoral Fellow to join our team. The candidate will lead a research project focusing on molecular microbiology of infectious diseases, including inhibitor design and target validation.

Responsibilities

• Inhibitor Design: Apply computational tools (docking, molecular dynamics) or experimental methods to design and screen small-molecule, peptide, or fragment-based inhibitors against target proteins.
• Assay Development: Establish biochemical, biophysical, and cellular assays to measure inhibitor binding affinity and functional enzyme inhibition.
• Construct Cloning: Design and construct expression plasmids, genetic vectors, and CRISPR-based tools for bacterial/host systems.
• Strain Engineering: Engineer microbial strains and mammalian cells.
• Protein Expression: Purify target proteins using chromatographic methods.
• Characterization: Perform biochemical characterization, Western blotting, ELISA, and functional assays to validate protein activity.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated experience in inhibitor design, structural biology, or biochemical assay development for target evaluation.
• Proven expertise in molecular cloning techniques (Gibson assembly, restriction-based, PCR).
• Hands-on experience with bacterial transformation and genetic manipulation.
• Strong background in recombinant protein expression and purification.
• Evidence of productivity: At least one first-author publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
• Experience using structural biology or computational chemistry software (e.g., PyMOL, Schrödinger, AutoDock, Rosetta).
• Experience with biophysical characterization techniques (e.g., SPR, ITC, MST).
• Knowledge of bioinformatics tools for gene/protein analysis.