Research Associate and Co-op Positions – Human Brain single-cell RNAseq (Harvard Medical School / The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard)
We are seeking highly motivated, collaborative research associates and co-ops to join our interdisciplinary research teams at Harvard Medical School and The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where we use a variety of molecular biology technologies to study gene expression in the human brain. Many of these approaches such as high-throughput droplet-based single-cell RNAseq (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL7ptq2Dcf0) we invented in the McCarroll Lab (http://mccarrolllab.org) and have published in an open-source fashion, while others are currently in development.
At Harvard Medical School, successful candidates will join a research team that is working to understand the genetic and cellular basis of normal human brain function, and what goes awry in brain disorders such as Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder and Huntington’s disease. At The Broad Institute, candidates will be joining our exciting new Human Brain Variation project (https://brain.broadinstitute.org/) funded by NIH’s BICAN initiative, which seeks to address an unmet need in cell census research: to understand the cell-type-specific mechanisms and larger tissue-level biological principles that generate meaningful variation in brain biology among people.
Description of duties:
Contribute to all aspects of experimental workflows including: planning experiments; creating DNA-barcoding reagents; extracting nuclei and DNA from human brain tissue; preparing molecular libraries for next generation sequencing (NGS); and protocol optimization.
Conduct bench experiments with minimal supervision.
Maintain meticulous records and document all experiments in the digital lab notebook.
Attend and contribute to team meetings.
Contribute to other projects as needed.
All research associates will have opportunities to present at lab meetings and contribute to writing experimental protocols.
Qualifications and Skills:
Bachelor’s degree in biology, neuroscience, chemistry, biomedical engineering, or other quantitative area of science or engineering. Extensive course work could in some cases be equivalent to a major.
0-1 years of laboratory experience.
Experience generating single-cell RNAseq, ATACseq, and multiome libraries is preferred, but not required.
Additional qualifications:
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Able to critically read and discuss scientific research publications.
Strong ability to work both independently and collaboratively.
Able to thrive in a fast-paced rapidly changing environment.
Must be comfortable working with human biological specimens and able to work onsite five days per week.
Research associate positions are one-year term positions with possibility of extension, contingent on work performance and continued funding to support the position.