[ccp4bb] Postdoc position on eye-disease structural biology at Stanford University

Dear all,

Prof. Vinit Mahajan’s group in Department of Ophthalmology, Stanford School of Medicine is seeking applications for a postdoctoral fellow position from ambitious, enthusiastic, and recent Ph.D. holders or graduate students who are expecting to finish his/her graduate degree in structural biology, biophysics, biochemistry, bioengineering, molecular cell biology, or pharmaceutics. The successful candidate will be a structural biologist with strong interests in biomedical, translational, and pharmaceutical sciences, who can carry out one or few structural biology projects for eye disease proteins. Dr. Mahajan is a physician/surgeon, and a scientist, who is the vice chair for research and the director of Molecular Surgery Program of the Stanford’s Byers Eye Institute. He runs a large interdisciplinary group of scientists and clinicians, who are actively seeking for therapeutics and cure for eye patients (https://mahajanlab.stanford.edu/).

Mahajan group is pursuing structural biology research focused on eye diseases in a close collaboration with Prof. Soichi Wakatsuki, Structural Biology Department, Stanford School of Medicine and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (http://med.stanford.edu/wakatsukilab.html). Dr. Wakatsuki’s interests cover protein-protein interactions (Comerci & Herrmann et al. Nat. Comm. 2019; Herrmann et al. PNAS 2019), enzyme dynamics (Stoffel et al. PNAS 2019), and structure-based drug design (Hwang et. al., Nat. Comm. 2018).

Both Drs. Mahajan and Wakatsuki are members of Stanford BioX and ChEM-H, interdisciplinary institutes encompassing three Stanford Schools: Medicine, Chemistry, and Engineering. This provides a truly interdisciplinary research environment at the crossroad of medical science, structural biology and state-of-the art bioimaging technologies. The two groups collaborate closely on structural biology research on eye disease proteins. See one of our recent publications on the structure-function investigation of a cysteine protease: Calpain-5 (Velez et al. Cell Reports 2020). Other ophthalmologic structural biology work includes: 1) targeted structure-functionomics for eye diseases; and 2) structure-based drug design for retinal degeneration.

SLAC provides state-of-the-art multi-modal structural biology technologies covering a wide range of spatiotemporal resolutions. SLAC hosts large scale infrastructures: SSRL Structural Molecular Biology (SMB), and Linac Coherent Light Source (LC/LS) providing synchrotron and X-ray beams for crystallography, scattering and spectroscopy, and Stanford-SLAC CryoEM Center (S2C2) providing access to the cryoelectron microscopy (Cryo-EM) instruments for both single particle structural analysis and tomography (CryoET).

Qualifications: Ph.D. or equivalent degree in the relevant fields within the last 3 years. English proficiency is mandatory. Familiarity with one or more of structural biology techniques, including X-ray crystallography, small angle X-ray scattering, cryoEM/ET, biocomputation, and hybrid methods, as well as strong background and experiences in sample preparation and characterization. The applicant must be a good team player. Experiences in scientific writing and grant application to US funding agencies are plus.

Deadline: as soon as the position is filled.

Contacts: Prof. Vinit Mahajan (vinit.mahajan@stanford.edu)
Prof. Soichi Wakatsuki (soichi.wakatsuki@stanford.edu)

See the following websites for more information:
BioX: https://biox.stanford.edu/
SSRL: https://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/
SSRL-SMB: https://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/smb/index.html/
LCLS: https://lcls.slac.stanford.edu/
S2C2: https://cryoem.slac.stanford.edu/s2c2/

With best wishes

Vinit Mahajan and Soichi Wakatsuki

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Soichi Wakatsuki, Ph.D.
Professor of Photon Science
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
2575 Sand Hill Road, MS 69
Menlo Park, CA   94025-7015
Tel: 1-650-926-4147, Fax:1-650-926-4100

Professor of Structural Biology
School of Medicine
Stanford University
James H. Clark Center W250A
318 Campus Drive
Stanford, CA   94305-5014
Tel: 1-650-723-8404
e-mail: soichi.wakatsuki@stanford.edu