Postdoctoral Fellow - Protein & Immunology Engineering

Overview

Georgia Tech prides itself on its technological resources, collaborations, high-quality student body, and its commitment to building an outstanding and diverse community of learning, discovery, and creation. We strongly encourage applicants whose values align with our institutional values, as outlined in our Strategic Plan. These values include academic excellence, diversity of thought and experience, inquiry and innovation, collaboration and community, and ethical behavior and stewardship. Georgia Tech has policies to promote a healthy work-life balance and is aware that attracting faculty may require meeting the needs of two careers.

About Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech is a top-ranked public research university situated in the heart of Atlanta, a diverse and vibrant city with numerous economic and cultural strengths. The Institute serves more than 45,000 students through top-ranked undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs in engineering, computing, science, business, design, and liberal arts. Georgia Tech's faculty attracted more than $1.4 billion in research awards this past year in fields ranging from biomedical technology to artificial intelligence, energy, sustainability, semiconductors, neuroscience, and national security. Georgia Tech ranks among the nation's top 20 universities for research and development spending and No. 1 among institutions without a medical school.

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1. Students are our top priority.

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Over the next decade, Georgia Tech will become an example of inclusive innovation, a leading technological research university of unmatched scale, relentlessly committed to serving the public good; breaking new ground in addressing the biggest local, national, and global challenges and opportunities of our time; making technology broadly accessible; and developing exceptional, principled leaders from all backgrounds ready to produce novel ideas and create solutions with real human impact.

About the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology

The School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering offers excellent undergraduate and graduate programs in the nation's largest college of engineering, we provide our students with incomparable opportunities, countless options for collaboration with experts in other fields across campus, and access to some of the best research and academic facilities available in higher education. Boasting world-class professors, our school has one of the largest faculties of any chemical engineering program nationwide. Our faculty members are leaders in their research fields and recipients of many of the most prestigious awards given to professionals in the discipline. Ranked among the top ten engineering programs in the nation for both its graduate and undergraduate programs, the school is also one of the oldest and largest programs.

Atlanta, GA

The Immunological and Cellular Engineering Laboratory is a research group in the School of Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech that is devoted to the design, study, and testing of next generation engineered protein therapeutics and high throughput biologic discovery platforms. We are currently seeking multiple highly motivated individuals to contribute to our research programs as Postdoctoral fellows / Research Scientists in Atlanta, GA. The founder of the Immunological and Cellular Engineering Laboratory, Dr. John Blazeck, is a recent National Institute of Health New Innovator who will work hand in hand with successful applicants to advance the leading edge of protein therapeutic discovery for cancer treatment and detection.

We encourage applications from candidates who excel in collaborative, inclusive, and fast-based research environments, and who have a strong desire to work on projects designed to advance early cancer detection and therapeutic engineering. Individuals who have experience with yeast (S. cerevisiae) cell engineering, large-scale protein library creation, protein directed evolution and high throughput screening are especially encouraged to apply. Successful candidates will be driven and creative individuals that will expand the therapeutic space accessible by next-generation chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies, engineer new classes of synthetic protein receptors for cancer detection, pioneer new OMICs profiling techniques, and develop enhanced in vivo directed evolution capabilities. They will take a lead role in experimental design, execution of experiments, and interpretation of results to achieve the major objectives of the project.

*Please note, there will be multiple hires for this role.

• Lead protein engineering and directed evolution efforts.
• Perform parallel large scale library construction and screening using S. cerevisiae.
• Lead bioinformatic analyses of Next Generation Sequencing data sets
• Work closely with Dr. Blazeck and lab members in experimental design and play a lead role in regular internal project meetings and data reviews.
• Work with the Dr. Blazeck and university officials in grant administration, project budgets, data storage, and scientific reporting.
• Play a lead role in drafting manuscripts and grant applications.

Ph.D. in Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Biology, Biochemistry, Biomedical Engineering, or related fields with deep expertise in yeast synthetic biology and protein directed evolution and screening.

• Expertise in molecular cloning and yeast cellular engineering techniques.
• Skilled in large-scale library design and generation in S. cerevisiae.
• Skilled in computational protein design and analysis is a plus.
• Proficient in fluorescent activated cell sorting, yeast-display, NGS library preparation, and routine bioinformatics analyses of NGS data sets.
• Proficiency with statistical software like SPSS and/or GraphPad Prism.
• Excellent time management skills, effective with multitasking, and an adept ability to improvise work plans while maintaining efficiency.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills are required.
• Demonstrated desire to mentor graduate and/or undergraduate students.

Please attach the following documents:

• CV
• List of publications
• List of references

For additional information please contact Dr. John Blazeck at john.blazeck@chbe.gatech.edu

The candidate of choice will be required to pass a pre-employment background screening. http://policylibrary.gatech.edu/employment/pre-employment-screening.

The University System of Georgia is comprised of our 26 institutions of higher education and learning as well as the System Office. Our USG Statement of Core Values are Integrity, Excellence, Accountability, and Respect. These values serve as the foundation for all that we do as an organization, and each USG community member is responsible for demonstrating and upholding these standards. More details on the USG Statement of Core Values and Code of Conduct are available in USG Board Policy 8.2.18.1.2 and can be found on-line at https://www.usg.edu/policymanual/section8/C224/#p8.2.18_personnel_conduct.

Additionally, USG supports Freedom of Expression as stated in Board Policy 6.5 Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom found on-line at https://www.usg.edu/policymanual/section6/C2653.

The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. The University is committed to maintaining a fair and respectful environment for all. To that end, and in accordance with federal and state law, Board of Regents policy, and University policy, Georgia Tech provides equal opportunity to all faculty, staff, students, and all other members of the Georgia Tech community, including applicants for admission and/or employment, contractors, volunteers, and participants in institutional programs, activities, or services. Georgia Tech complies with all applicable laws and regulations governing equal opportunity in the workplace and in educational activities.

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More information on these policies can be found here: https://www.usg.edu/policymanual/section6/c2714 Board of Regents Policy Manual | University System of Georgia (usg.edu).