Assistant Project Scientist

Project Description:

The Assistant Project Scientist will be expected to lead the design, implementation and analysis of experiments determining the effect of microbes on the productivity and resilience of seagrass to environmental stressors. This includes both application of existing methods and development of new methods to culture microbes from seagrass, inoculate them onto hosts in controlled ways for experimental analyses, and characterization of the growth, transcriptomic and metabolomic impacts of these experiments on both the host and microbiomes. The candidate will also be responsible for designing and implementing cutting-edge analytical pipelines to evaluate 16S rRNA gene amplicon, metagenomic, metatranscriptomic and metabolomic data generated from these experiments and will be expected to publish these results in appropriate scientific journals. The candidate will lead quarterly meetings to train other lab members working on these projects to help them attain overall and individual project goals. The candidate will be expected to present their research locally or at national/international scientific meetings and serve as a reviewer for scientific journals. Strong interpersonal skills, organizational skills, mentorship capabilities and leadership qualities are essential for this position as they will mentor several lab members (graduate and undergraduate researchers) as part of their position.

Major responsibilities:

Research (80%): The candidate will lead the design, implementation and analysis of experiments determining the effect of microbes on the productivity and resilience of seagrass to environmental stressors. This includes both application of existing methods and development of new methods to culture microbes from seagrass, inoculate them onto hosts in controlled ways for experimental analyses, and characterization of the growth, transcriptomic and metabolomic impacts of these experiments on both the host and microbiomes. The candidate will also be responsible for designing and implementing cutting-edge analytical pipelines to evaluate 16S, metagenomic, metatranscriptomic and metabolomic data generated from these experiments and develop peer review publications from this work. The candidate will assist in writing proposals for funding from federal and state agencies and other funding organizations. The candidate will prepare and assist in the preparation of reports as required by granting agencies and prepare modifications of budgets and other grant components as needed.

Professional competency and activity (10%): Candidate will present research locally or at national/international scientific meetings and serve as a reviewer for scientific journals. The candidate is expected to communicate to the public and other disciplines the results of work in the lab, and in the broader fields of microbial ecology and bacterial genomics.

University and Public service (10%): Candidate will participate in University service by mentoring graduate and undergraduate researchers with the aim of assisting them in developing and implementing their own research goals.

Qualified candidate must hold a Doctorate in Science (PhD) and have at least 4 years' research experience post-PhD in marine microbial ecology. Successful candidates will have a deep knowledge of the current state of the literature on host-microbe interactions in general, as well as specific literature on seagrass-microbe interaction. The candidate will have specific experience with plant cultivation, field sampling techniques, DNA and RNA extractions, high throughput sequencing, metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analysis, metabolomics, and bioinformatic tools and workflows (including those that make use of R, Python, and high performance computing resources ). The candidate will also have experience designing microbome manipulations and culturing of microbes, maintaining coding pipelines through version control programs such as Git, interpreting results and writing scientific manuscripts.

Published track record of experience in microbiology, microbial ecology, microbial genomics, or related areas. Experience in working on long-term projects with minimal day-today supervision. The successful candidate will also have experience working in collaborative teams, simultaneously supervising multiple projects, and mentoring graduate and/or undergraduate students.

Experience with microbial culturing and assembly of synthetic communities.

• 3 required (contact information only)

3 Professional References

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• "Misconduct" means any violation of the policies or laws governing conduct at the applicant's previous place of employment, including, but not limited to, violations of policies or laws prohibiting sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of harassment, discrimination, dishonesty, or unethical conduct, as defined by the employer.
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