Research Associate in Cell Engineering, Horns Lab, Arc Institute
Job Description
The Horns Lab at Arc Institute is hiring a Research Associate II to help build the next generation of tools for watching and steering cells inside living animals. The post is open until filled.
At a glance
- Post: Research Associate in Cell Engineering
- Where: Arc Institute, Palo Alto, California, USA
- Closing date: none given. The post is open until filled
- Pay: the advertisement states no figure
Read the official Arc Institute advertisement before you apply.
The work
You would contribute to platform technologies for monitoring and manipulating cells in living animals, and pick up expertise in molecular biology, cell engineering, viral vector production and in vivo models. The lab sits alongside world-leading groups in single-cell genomics, computational biology and molecular engineering.
The relevant projects extend the lab’s recent work on cellular RNA exporters, which monitor cell dynamics without destroying the cell and deliver mRNA between cells. Your job would be to take that system into living animals: engineering constructs that report the transcriptome of a specific cell population from a blood draw, and that track how tissues answer a perturbation. Reading a tissue’s state from a blood sample, with no biopsy, is the kind of capability that changes what experiments are possible.
Techniques run across restriction cloning, Gibson assembly, DNA and RNA isolation, cDNA work, mammalian cell culture and animal experiments.
What you need
- A strong background in molecular biology and mammalian cell culture
- Comfort working with animals
- Speed with care: good documentation and good lab practice while moving quickly
- The advert asks for a minimum two-year commitment, and is aimed at people who explicitly want this experience as a route into a PhD programme
About the employer
Arc Institute is an independent nonprofit research organisation working at the interface of artificial intelligence and biology. It was founded in 2021, is based in Palo Alto, and partners with Stanford University, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. Its own pitch is that its scientists get long-term funding and industry-scale resources while staying free to chase high-risk, long-horizon questions.
How to apply
Apply through the Arc Institute job page. No closing date is given, so apply early. Check the visa position before you start. US research employers differ on whether they sponsor, and some adverts say outright that they will not.
Browse more research jobs on ResearchJobs.in, or search our Find a supervisor page.
Hiring institution: Arc Institute
Official advertisement: job-boards.greenhouse.io
How to prepare for this application
- Two years is the stated minimum. Arc is explicit that this is a pre-PhD portfolio-building post.
- List your cloning methods. Restriction cloning and Gibson assembly are named in the advert.
- Read the RNA exporter work first. Your application will be stronger if you can say which part of it interests you.
- Check sponsorship before you invest time. It is the biggest single filter on US research applications from overseas.
About Arc Institute
Arc Institute is an independent nonprofit research organisation working at the interface of artificial intelligence and biology. It was founded in 2021, is based in Palo Alto, and partners with Stanford University, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. Its own pitch is that its scientists get long-term funding and industry-scale resources while staying free to chase high-risk, long-horizon questions.
