Job Description

About Arc Institute

The Arc Institute is a new scientific institution conducting curiosity-driven basic science and technology development to understand and treat complex human diseases. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Arc is an independent research organization founded on the belief that many important research programs will be enabled by new institutional models. Arc operates in partnership with Stanford University, UCSF, and UC Berkeley.

While the prevailing university research model has yielded many tremendous successes, we believe in the importance of institutional experimentation as a way to make progress. These include:

• Funding: Arc fully funds Core Investigators’ (PIs’) research groups, liberating scientists from the typical constraints of project-based external grants.
• Technology: Biomedical research has become increasingly dependent on complex, multimodal tools. Arc Technology Centers develop, optimize, and deploy rapidly advancing experimental and computational technologies in collaboration with Core Investigators.
• Support: Arc aims to provide first-class support—operationally, financially, and scientifically—that will enable scientists to pursue long-term high risk, high reward research that can meaningfully advance progress in disease cures, including neurodegeneration, cancer, and immune dysfunction.
• Culture: We believe that culture matters enormously in science and that excellence is difficult to sustain. We aim to create a culture that is focused on scientific curiosity, a deep commitment to truth, broad ambition, and selfless collaboration.

Arc has scaled to over 350 people to date. With $650M+ in committed funding and a state of the art new lab facility in Palo Alto, Arc will continue to grow quickly in the coming years.

About the position

The Gilbert Lab is looking for motivated, hard-working and curious applicants. Our expertise is in synthetic biology, functional genomics and epigenetics. We have a long standing interest in using CRISPR approaches to control transcription. We are focused on utilizing our expertise to tackle big problems in human biology such as how cellular identity and the epigenome are determined and maintained. Lastly, we are focused on leveraging our expertise in epigenetics and synthetic biology to design new therapeutic strategies in the context of cancer, viral biology and neurodegeneration.

The questions we ask:

1. How are genes turned on and off?
2. How are mechanisms of epigenetic memory established and maintained?
3. Which genes drive complex disease phenotypes and what are their mechanisms? How can we modulate these for therapeutic means?
4. How can we use synthetic biology approaches to discover therapeutic strategies and design new gene, protein and small molecule therapeutics?
5. How can we deliver genetic medicines to the right cell types in the body?

The approach we take: CRISPR screens, high throughput synthetic biology, perturb-seq, in vitro disease models including iPSC models and primary cells, in vivo disease models.

Post-docs will be encouraged to lead independent projects resulting in high impact publications, present at conferences and prepare for long-term careers in academia or industry.

About you

• You are extremely curious and self-motivated to push the boundaries of biotechnology and/or biomedical research.
• You thrive in a fast-paced environment while conducting rigorous and impactful research.
• You are intellectually independent and are able to design new research directions and projects (with input from your PI).
• You are eager to learn and adapt new techniques.
• You are excited by solving puzzles that have a translational impact and/or creating new therapeutic approaches.

In this position you will

• Design, perform and analyze experiments
• Keep appropriate experimental records and documentation
• Analyze results with the Principal Investigator
• General lab maintenance as well as operation and maintenance of equipment and instruments.
• Collaborate with post-docs, students and employees
• May mentor/train research associates, technicians, and students.
• Publish, present, and represent that lab in journals and conferences.
• Present at lab meetings, and participate in Arc-wide activities (seminars, symposiums, etc).

Requirements

• Doctorate (MD, PhD, VMD, or DDS) in the area directly related to the field of research specialization.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work in a fast-paced environment and be both an independent thinker and a highly collaborative team player.

The minimum base salary for this position is $80,000. Base salary for this role is determined by how many months of relevant postdoctoral experience a successful candidate has. Base salary for this role is not negotiable.