Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits. We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

The role

The Environmental Biotechnology Innovation Centre (EBIC), which ICOS is a member of, brings together scientists from ten leading UK institutions in a mission to engineer the properties and functions of micro-organisms, creating more effective ways to monitor the environment and remove pollutants. The Cyanobacteria Engineering for Restoring Environments (CYBER) project aims to develop the foundational multidisciplinary tools needed to de-risk environmentally focused engineering biology and ultimately support its future deployment into real-world ecosystems.

We are looking for a synthetic biologist with computational and experimental experience interested in applying their expertise into Biosecurity and DNA data storage. You will join our consortium dedicated to the mission of restoring natural environments by engineering microbial machines. Working at the forefront of information & coding theory and cryptography together with molecular biologists and engineering biologists we will engineer microorganisms as devices to deliver environmental solutions that are cryptographically biosecured by design. Our goal is to ensure the utmost safety and traceability using genomic barcoding, watermarking and other cryptographic and DNA data encoding techniques for engineered organisms before deploying them into complex ecosystems. You will have the opportunity to work closely with experimentalist and have access to state-of-the-art computational and bio-nano-technology equipment to test, debug and improve their theories in living organisms.

You will be able to spend time away from Newcastle visiting collaborators' labs in the UK and abroad and attending business meetings outside Newcastle, including international conferences and meetings.

This is a full-time, fixed-term position starting immediately for a duration of 24 months, with the potential for extension.

To apply, please complete an online application and upload a plain text copy of your CV and covering letter only. In your covering letter, you should evidence how you meet or exceed the essential and desirable requirements for the role. Please note, any other ‘Additional Document’ you upload may not be received by the reviewing panel.

As part of our commitment to career development for research colleagues, the University has developed 3 levels of research role profiles. These profiles set out firstly the generic competences and responsibilities expected of role holders at each level and secondly the general qualifications and experiences needed for entry at a particular level.

Key accountabilities

Design, implementation, test and debug information theory, coding, and cryptographic schemes for reliably and securely storing data (e.g. barcodes, watermarks, etc) in living organisms and improve their biosecurity
Consider the state of the art in error correction techniques in DNA synthesis, DNA sequencing, DNA data storage as well as naturally occurring mutation types and rates to improve biosecurity schemes
Develop conceptual and computational frameworks to evaluate the effectiveness of the various schemes developed in 1 & 2 under different realistic experimental in vitro, in vivo and environmental conditions
Collaborate with molecular biologists and engineering biologists in the design of wet-lab experiments to validate, debug and improve all of the above
Improve the algorithms and tools used or developed in 1,2,3 & 4 above based on experimental data obtained
Following and establishing good software engineering practices within the project and across the research group's projects (e.g. via use of version control system)
Contribution to writing scientific papers
Oral presentations at meetings, workshops and conferences

The person

Essential:

Demonstrable experience in both computational and experimental synthetic biology
Publication of work in peer-reviewed in relevant conferences and/or journals for the above
Demonstrable experience in a microbiology laboratory running, e.g., cloning and transformation experiments, bacteria culturing, microscopy, etc.
Molecular biology, Synthetic Biology or Biotechnology familiarity
Demonstrable expertise in Java, Ruby, Python or C/ C++ programming
Competence in Linux or OS X programming environments
Software version control system (e.g. Git, GitHub, Bitbucket, etc)

Desirable:

Bioinformatics experience
Coding theory or Information theory or Cryptography
Laboratory automation
Biosecurity experience
DNA data storage experience
Molecular computation, e.g. DNA computing, or molecular fabrication, e.g. DNA or RNA origami techniques or other DNA & RNA programmable self-assembly, etc.
Presentation of work at scientific meetings

Attributes and behaviour

Essential:

An ability to communicate effectively via oral and written media (e.g technical reports, papers, presentations)
Capacity for original thought and self-driven
Enthusiastic, hardworking, team player and goal-setter
Ability to interact with people from different disciplines
Punctual and generally dependable
Keen and motivated to work across disciplinary fields

Desirable

Communication skills with the public
Ability to supervise student projects

Qualifications

An undergraduate degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics, or related fields (Research Assistant)
A PhD degree in a suitable field (Research Associates and Senior Research associates) or closely to complete (Research Assistant)

Newcastle University is a global University where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. As a University of Sanctuary, we aim to provide a welcoming place of safety for all, offering opportunities to people fleeing violence and persecution.

We are committed to being a fully inclusive university which actively recruits, supports and retains colleagues from all sectors of society. We value diversity as well as celebrate, support and thrive on the contributions of all of our employees and the communities they represent. We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams, we believe that success is built on having teams whose backgrounds and experiences reflect the diversity of our university and student population.

At Newcastle University we hold a silver Athena Swan award in recognition of our good employment practices for the advancement of gender equality. We also hold a Race Equality Charter Bronze award in recognition of our work towards tackling race inequality in higher education REC. We are a Disability Confident employer and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role as part of the offer and interview scheme.

In addition, we are a member of the Euraxess initiative supporting researchers in Europe.

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