Assistant Project Scientist – Hector Aguilar-Carreno Lab Full-time

Assistant Project Scientist – Hector Aguilar-Carreno Lab

UCLA's Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics is seeking to fill a full-time Assistant Project Scientist position in the Hector Aguilar-Carreno lab. The Assistant Project Scientist candidate will perform research on structural biology of RNA/DNA viruses and develop therapeutics against them.

The Assistant Project Scientist position is a 12-month non-Senate position. This series is assigned to appointees who make significant and creative contributions to a research or creative project in any academic discipline. Appointees in this series may be ongoing members of a research team or may be employed for a limited period of time to contribute high-level skills to a specific research or creative program. Appointees in this series are not required to carry out independent research or to develop an independent research reputation.

Specific responsibilities for this position include but are not limited to:

1. Conduct research for elucidating the structures and functions of viral proteins and protein complexes
2. Conduct research on the structures and mechanisms of assembly and enzymatic viral proteins using cryogenic electron microscopy (cryoEM) and tomography (cryoET) as the primary tools.
3. Generate and/or test therapeutics against pathogenic viruses of high human concern using viral inhibition or binding assays
4. Manage the storage and operation of cryoEM compute resources including data management and processing
5. Carry out both molecular biology, cryoEM structural studies of various components of viral proteins and cellular cryoET structures of virally infected cells.
6. Build atomic models and Alphafold models to the resulting 3D structures of these complexes and tomograms for mechanistic interpretation to form the foundation for future drug design efforts against infectious diseases.
7. Work with graduate students and other members of the lab to use cryoEM and cellular cryoET of virus infection and assembly to define how viruses replicate within host cells and determine the molecular details of viral assembly within the native cytoplasm environment.
8. Manage undergraduate students and their projects
9. Manage equipment – Flow cytometer, Ultracentrifuge
10. Assist with preparation of grant proposals
11. Preparation of manuscripts for publication in scientific journals.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Ph.D. (or equivalent) in Structural Biology • At least 5 years of cryoEM and cryoET experience • Familiar with bash terminals and Linux filesystems • Microscope operation and data analysis • Familiar with cryoET tomogram reconstruction and subtomogram averaging pipelines (IMOD, RELION, WARP)

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