Research Assistant III Lab

About the role

The Nascent Transcriptomics Core at Harvard Medical School is seeking a Research Assistant III to join our team. This position offers the opportunity to learn cutting-edge NGS methods and nascent RNA library construction strategies, gain experience with nascent RNA data analysis, contribute to projects of direct biomedical relevance, and provide a valuable, collaborative service to the scientific research community at Harvard Medical School and the greater Boston area.

Responsibilities

• Receive and perform quality control (QC) on cells and materials from users.
• Construct NGS libraries according to established protocols.
• Perform QC on constructed libraries using qPCR, TapeStation, gel electrophoresis, etc., and submit for high-throughput sequencing.
• Analyze users' data following established pipelines and scripts.
• Interpret analysis results and investigate potential problems.
• Prepare data packages for users.
• Keep detailed, accurate, up-to-date records of all samples and experiments.
• Maintain laboratory stocks and replace as needed.
• Maintain laboratory records.
• In consultation with the core director, devise and execute experiments to test protocol improvements.
• Advise users on sample preparation.

Qualifications

• Basic Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Biochemistry, or related discipline, or 4 or more years of laboratory experience in these or related disciplines. 2 years of direct work experience in the laboratory setting.
• Additional Qualifications and Skills: Demonstrated knowledge of general molecular cloning techniques, and basic laboratory procedures (e.g PCR, qPCR, nucleic acid ligation, buffer preparation, etc.). Experience with RNase free techniques. Experience with NGS library construction (RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, etc). Familiarity with Linux command line, shell script, or R. Knowledge of bioinformatics related to NGS data analysis. Experience with mammalian tissue culture and aseptic technique. Excellent written and oral communication skills.