Laboratory maintenance and organization: You will assist in the ordering and management of lab supplies, lab organization, lab safety records, and lab inspections to ensure that the laboratory operates efficiently and safely. This will include maintenance of lab stocks, defrosting freezers, facilitating repairs on instrumentation, coordination for building maintenance/repairs, coordination of lab meeting and journal club schedules, and working with environmental health and safety (EHS) for disposal of chemical waste.
Active research projects: You will spend at least 50% of your time working on research projects related to protein quality control, protein degradation, and targeted protein degradation. This includes accurate record keeping of your work and communicating your results through discussions with lab members and participation and presentations in lab meetings. At times, the applicant will drive an independent research project, while at other times, will require close collaboration with others in the lab to make sure the lab's research goals are met. Contributions to the research projects will result in co-authorship on publications from the lab.
Preparation of liquid culture media, agar plates, and general solutions: You will be responsible for preparing the necessary solutions and media required for general lab support and your experiments, including with the associated calculations.
Culturing yeast, bacteria, and genetically manipulating these organisms: You will need to culture, maintain stocks, transform, sporulate, and perform genetic manipulations of these microorganisms to advance our goals.
General molecular biology and cloning: You will perform PCR, DNA preparations, and bacterial transformations to modify DNA and generate clones.
Protein expression and purification: You will express and purify proteins from various biological sources using a range techniques including size exclusion chromatography, ion exchange chromatography, affinity methods, etc.. This involves following protocols and making decisions based on the real-time observations. These will include general lab reagents and for individual project experiments.
You will be expected to read primary scientific literature and parse the relevant information to contribute intellectually to the research work.
Proficiency with these techniques will allow training in more advanced methods including flow cytometry, DNA library preparation, next-gen sequencing, data analysis, and maintenance and experimentation in mammalian tissue culture cells.
Training and assisting other lab members: You will assist other lab members (undergraduate students, graduate students, and other technicians) in their research work, training them on lab techniques, instruments, and protocols to help advance the research goals of the lab.
Assisting the PI: At times, you will work with the PI to complete individual tasks or assist other lab members, at the PI's direction.
While the position is for 40 hours a week, it is likely that certain experiments will require longer hours on some days. In general, in this research lab, work schedules can be flexible based on many factors.