Position: Group Leader – Structural Biology – Crystallography
Client: Dart NeuroScience LLC (DNS) is a privately held Delaware Limited Liability Company with offices in San Diego, CA. DNS will discover new technologies and develop new therapies to help maintain cognitive vitality throughout life.
DNS is seeking a group leader with a strong background in macromolecular crystallography.
Reporting to the director of structural biology, the successful candidate will be responsible to establish and manage the crystallography team within the group.
The candidate should have expert knowledge of the state-of-the-art crystallization and structure determination equipment and processes necessary to produce high-quality crystal structures and to support structure-guided drug design.
Major responsibilities will include independent hands-on experimental work and leading a team of scientists and research associates to support high-throughput crystallization, X-ray data collection, structure determination and refinement of high-quality protein structures originating from different protein families including membrane proteins.
The candidate will be required to give scientific expert advice to group members
and have frequent interactions with the molecular biologists, protein production team and protein chemists in the group to provide ideas on new protein boundary designs, incorporation of mutations that alter protein function and stability and on new ideas to improve protein expression and purification yields, crystallizability and diffraction quality of protein crystals.
The candidate will also interact closely with computational and medicinal chemists in the company to propose new ideas for structure-based combinatorial libraries, inhibitor design, or variants of existing compounds that may be useful
in advancing project goals.
Good communication skills, leadership skills, project and sample management experience overseeing multiple projects in parallel as well as capacity for strategic thinking are required.
Requirements & Responsibilities:
· Ph.D. in life science with thesis.
· 8+ years of relevant experience in protein crystallography
and structure-guided drug design. Preferably 1+ year of industrial supervisory experience of Ph.D. scientists and research associates.
· Proven hands-on experience in high-throughput crystallization, synchrotron data collection, structure determination, structure refinement, structure-based drug design and
fragment-based drug discovery.
· Familiar with all major crystallography software packages (HKL, CCP4, COOT, Pymol).
· Expert knowledge in the scientific principles and concepts of protein crystallography including state-of-the-art high-throughput crystallization, phasing (MAD/SAD/MR), density modification, model building, refinement and structure validation.
· Knowledge in other areas of structural biology (protein chemistry and crystallography) and membrane protein crystallography is desirable.
· Inter-disciplinary knowledge of drug discovery (enzymology, cellular pharmacology, DMPK) is a plus.
· Demonstrated independent thought/creativity in science.
· Excellent
collaboration, communication (oral and written) and multitasking skills and able to present work formally to Scientific Research Committees.
Opportunity: DNS offers competitive salaries and a great benefits package including incentive bonuses, healthcare, vision, dental, long-term disability, life insurance and a 401(k) retirement savings plan.
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