Gaw Lab – Junior, Assistant, or Associate Specialist Full-time

Gaw Lab – Junior, Assistant, or Associate Specialist

The Gaw Lab is seeking a Junior, Assistant, or Associate Specialist to join our collaborative group to study maternal-fetal immune responses.

Gaw Lab Focus: The lab is focused on understanding the unique innate and adaptive immune responses in pregnancy to infection and vaccination, with a focus on global infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, malaria, Zika, and RSV. Our studies leverage biospecimens collected from pregnancy cohorts to understand placental responses to infectious exposure, and the functional impact on placental development as it relates to adverse pregnancy outcomes.

The Specialist will have the opportunity to take a leadership role on ongoing projects that will involve experimental workflows such as:

• Cell culture: cell lines, stem cell culture, primary immune cell culture, placental explant culture.
• Molecular biology and biochemistry: RNA and DNA extractions, cloning, mutagenesis, quantitative PCR, protein immunoprecipitations, Western blotting, and proteomic sample preparation.
• Human immunology: spectral flow cytometry, in vitro cell-based immune assays, cytokine assays, quantitative multiplexed antibody assays (e.g. Luminex).
• Microscopy: Histology, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence
• Multi-omics: Single cell and spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, metagenomics.

Responsibilities: The Specialist will be an integral member of the research team and will be expected to:

• Lead their own independent experiments in the laboratory, under the supervision of the Principal Investigator and other senior lab members.
• Collaborate closely with the Prahl Lab and Robinson Lab and other collaborators on joint projects.
• Collaborate with and support other lab members on research projects.
• Maintain accurate and up to date documentation of experimental results and data analysis.
• Participate in mentorship and training of undergraduate, predoctoral, and graduate students.
• Stay up to date and familiar with relevant literature.
• Contribute to the day-to-day running and operation of the lab.
• Contribute to the scientific manuscripts and grants.
• Participate in regular group meetings, including weekly lab meetings, weekly biobank meetings, and biweekly meetings with the PI.
• Participate in University or Public Service.

Required Qualifications:

• Junior Specialist: Bachelor's degree (or equivalent degree) in biology, bioengineering, stem cell or molecular biology, immunology or a related field or at least four years of research experience.
• Assistant Specialist: Master's degree (or equivalent degree) in biology, bioengineering, stem cell or molecular biology, immunology or a related field or a baccalaureate degree (or equivalent degree) in biology, bioengineering, stem cell or molecular biology, immunology or a related field with three or more years of research experience.
• Associate Specialist: Master's degree (or equivalent degree) in biology, bioengineering, stem cell or molecular biology, immunology or a related field with five to ten years of research experience.
• Demonstrated experience in scientific publishing with relevant publications.
• Experience mentoring and training junior scientists.
• Cell culture expertise, including experience with human cell lines, primary human cells and immune cells, or stem cell culture.
• Basic molecular biology experience, including nucleic acid preparation, or PCR.
• Demonstrated excellent verbal, written, and communication skills.
• Ability to multitask.
• Strong attention to detail.
• A collaborative spirit and willingness to work with diverse teams.
• Advanced knowledge of Excel.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience and interest in immunology, infectious diseases, and reproductive biology.
• Knowledge of research with human biospecimens.
• Experience with BSL-2 or BSL-3 cell culture conditions.
• Bioinformatics knowledge and experience with high dimensional data processing and analysis.
• Experience with data analysis programs (eg FloJo, R, Graphpad Prism, Stata) and management of REDCap databases.
• Experience in designing and executing multiplexed bead assays for protein detection (eg cytokines and antibodies).
• Histology and immunohistochemistry experience.
• Coursework in statistics is a plus.

The start date is flexible until the position is filled. A two-year commitment is preferred.

See Table 24B for the salary range for this position. A reasonable estimate for this position is $55,000-$88,000. UCSF Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences has a total salary plan that uses National benchmarking standards to set salaries by subspecialty.