Research Scientist/Engineer 3-Division of Infectious Disease Diagnostics (Temporary)

Key Responsibilities

• Developmental Duties (35%): Design, develop, and validate innovative NGS, real-time qPCR, and ddPCR assays for viral, bacterial, fungal, and eukaryotic parasite diagnostic and research applications.
• Quality control and analyze data from NGS, qPCR, and ddPCR assays.
• Critically examine literature and newly developed assays from outside groups to determine best assays to adopt within our clinical and clinical trials laboratory.
• Implement GCLP standards, including robust documentation and compliance, across existing workflows.
• Implement new, unique procedures and technologies, which are not standardized, to fulfill the needs of individual studies.

Analytical/Operational Duties

• Perform and improve procedures currently used in the lab, including NGS, viral load and viral detection, gene expression, cell culture, and protein expression for binding antibody and general immunology testing.
• Draft manuscripts describing novel NGS, qPCR, and ddPCR assays.
• Maintain complete and accurate records and document all the changes.
• Apply a variety of techniques on different types of study samples according to the study needs, analyze the experimental results and determine the follow-up experiments.
• Write up and update standard operating procedures for laboratory personnel to follow.
• Perform laboratory standard operating procedures.
• Conduct data analysis and interpretation for grant submission and publication.
• Accommodate schedule changes to cooperatively accomplish required daily work.
• Ability to continue co-workers’ experiments and take over their responsibility.
• Participate in all laboratory maintenance and inventory duties.
• Initiate and manage moderate size projects and communicate with outside PIs and Supervisor regarding study project progress making recommendations for improvements.
• Provide cross-check of co-workers’ results and data entry to ensure data integrity.
• Follow the QA/QC policies and report all operation deviations.
• Perform computer security updates as required on the networked lab computers.

Leadership/Supervisory Duties

• This position: Train newly hired employees and students.
• Supervisory responsibility for junior staff, including hiring, training, performing performance evaluations, and disciplinary action.
• Delegates work when appropriate; consults with supervisor regarding department workload when necessary.
• Act as a role model/mentor to new employees and students.
• May direct the operation of one or more facets of the research laboratory.
• Evaluate and select new equipment.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Virology, Immunology, Molecular Biology, or related field and four years of relevant experience to include Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and an understanding of basic viral biology.
• Experience in primer/probe design for PCR, next-generation sequencing, collaborative project design, and understanding of basic viral biology.
• Prior experience in analyzing next-generation sequencing data.
• Strong written and communication skills.
• Ability to problem solve and troubleshoot.

Preferred Qualifications

• Doctoral degree in Virology, Immunology, Molecular Biology, or related field.
• Five years of experience in a related area.
• TCR and BCR sequencing experience.
• Highly organized and have a knowledge of laboratory working environments.
• Previous experience in PCR and droplet digital PCR is highly desirable.
• Good Clinical Laboratory Practice (GCLP) skills.