Yeast Display and Machine Learning Scientist I/II – Antibody Discovery

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is seeking an experienced PhD-level scientist to join the antibody discovery and antibody-based therapeutics development-focused Lab for Antibody and Nanobody Phage Display and Discovery (LAUNCHPAD). A pre-clinical strategic center, LAUNCHPAD’s mission is to streamline “discovery to translation” of antibody-based immunotherapies for cancer. The role offers the possibility to work closely with faculty in DFCI's Data Science department for ongoing computational professional development and collaboration.

About the role

The LAUNCHPAD team works closely with academic partners to design experimental strategies to identify promising antibody ‘hits’ as well as engineering hits to generate potential therapeutics, e.g., bispecific and CAR T-cell immunotherapies. The candidate should be an exceptionally motivated individual with a passion for working in multidisciplinary teams to model, design, screen, and engineer immunotherapy candidates and advance next-generation therapies.

Responsibilities

• Provide scientific and technical expertise within multidisciplinary project teams focused on the development of antibody-based immunotherapies.
• Establish, run, and continuously improve machine learning capabilities for antibody discovery, optimization, and development.
• Coordinate and maintain the GPU/CPU computational infrastructure provided by DFCI Data Science department required to run these tools.
• Develop antibody selection strategies to identify novel, fully human binders from a custom library using yeast-display and drive the optimization & integration of these applications into workstreams.
• Bridge computational and experimental workstreams, support programs with computational and wet lab needs.
• Collaborate with team members across groups and mentor junior lab members.
• Co-author technical reports and manuscripts for publication or presentation at internal and external meetings.

Requirements

• PhD scientist with hybrid dry/wet lab hands-on experience in machine learning and antibody discovery and development. A candidate with an M.S. degree and substantial relevant experience (>7 years) may also be considered for this role. Industry research experience is a plus.
• Generative and structure-based protein/antibody design (required): Strong track record, hands-on experience, and in-depth knowledge running antibody discovery tools (e.g., RFdiffusion/RFantibody, BindCraft, BoltzGen, Chai-2, or comparable), inverse-folding methods (ProteinMPNN), and structure prediction (AlphaFold3, RoseTTAFold, ESMFold), applied to affinity maturation, epitope-focused design, and developability triage.
• Comfort configuring and running these tools in a GPU/CPU compute environment (local, cluster, or cloud) is essential; formal software-engineering experience is not required.
• Antibody discovery and NGS analysis via yeast display (required): generating yeast-display libraries and performing selections for de novo discovery and affinity maturation, and HT analysis of antibody sequence data sets from NGS to assess round-to-round enrichment, in silico developability & hit selection via web-based platforms like PipeBio, Enpicom IGX, Platforma.bio, etc.
• Structural modeling of protein-protein interactions (e.g., MOE, HADDOCK) for epitope/paratope analysis is a plus.
• Exceptionally self-motivated and capable of taking scientific initiatives.
• Excellent communication (written and verbal) and troubleshooting skills as well as the ability to work with a wide variety of collaborators.
• Outstanding planning, organizational, and multi-tasking skills. Must consider attention to detail a strength.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced team environment.

Benefits

At Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, we work every day to create an innovative, caring, and inclusive environment where every patient, family, and staff member feels they belong. As relentless as we are in our mission to reduce the burden of cancer for all, we are committed to having faculty and staff who offer multifaceted experiences.

Pay

$80,000.00 - $95,900.00