08 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Wyss Institute, Massachusetts, United States

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University invites applications for Visiting Graduate Researcher position on the Brain Shuttle Discovery team of the Brain Targeting Program (BTP). This position will focus on brain shuttle compound discovery and brain-targeted therapeutics discovery.

The Wyss Institute’s BTP, co-led by James Gorman, M.D., Ph.D. and Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., is pursuing multiple projects directed to improved methods of transport across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) into the brain, with the aim of improving treatments for diverse diseases of the central nervous system. The brain shuttle discovery team focuses on two main areas. The first is discovery and validation of novel antibody (Ab) shuttle compounds that can greatly enhance the transport of therapeutics across the BBB to the brain. The second is optimization of our brain shuttles for specific payloads and diseases. By combining the BTP’s brain shuttles with therapeutics, we aim to develop novel, efficient brain-targeted drugs that significantly improve therapeutic efficacy for brain diseases. The Wyss team collaborates with academic collaborators and industry sponsors and partners to advance the development of novel brain targeting therapeutics.

Applicants should have knowledge of the brain, understand basic cell biology, and have laboratory training. The applicant is expected to perform tissue culture, rodent tissue lysate preparation, ELISAs, western blotting and others with training and guidance. The candidate will have one primary mentor, receive rigorous training, exposure to multiple disciplines, and gain in-depth knowledge about the BBB and brain shuttle discovery, preparing them to pursue academic or biopharmaceutical careers.

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University seeks a talented Postdoctoral Fellow who is an engineer interested in biology research, or a biologist looking for engineering applications to join our Kidney team. Led by Jennifer Lewis and with technical guidance from the multidisciplinary bioprinting research team, you will work to complete independent and team research projects involving 3D bioprinting using stem-cell derived human kidney organoids. The work will focus on building from organ-on-chip platforms to more functional organ-level tissues. Projects in our lab typically span multiple disciplines, so we welcome applicants from many backgrounds. Successful applicants typically have some level of hands-on experience designing and fabricating devices or have strong background in relevant biological assays.

The Shih Laboratory explores design principles for self-assembling molecular machines. We seek outstanding postdoctoral applicants with expertise in biomolecular engineering or science to work with Institute faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and research staff to develop an approach that will develop DNA-nanostructured vehicles for therapeutic delivery of cargo to cytoplasmic and organellar destinations.

The William Shih Laboratory, which explores design principles for self-assembling molecular machines, invites applications for a postdoctoral fellow position in the Wyss Molecular Robotics Initiative.  We seek outstanding postdoctoral applicants with expertise in biomolecular engineering or science to develop hierarchical self-assembly of hundreds to thousands of distinct DNA origami into addressable microstructures, exploiting the principles of crisscross assembly innovated in our lab. Potential applications of interest include artificial extracellular matrices for regenerative medicine, breadboards for localized molecular computing, and nanophotonic devices.

The lab of Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University seeks outstanding postdoctoral applicants with expertise and knowledge of reproductive biology to join an interdisciplinary team of biologists and engineers focused on the use of human Organ Chips to study the effects of healthy and dysbiotic microenvironments on contraceptive function and enable development of novel, non-hormonal, contraceptives.

The candidate will join the Chaikof lab at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is expected to closely interact with an interdisciplinary team of immunologists, biomedical engineers, developmental biologists, and clinician-investigators. The project will focus on the evaluation of strategies to engineer human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) that evade both the adaptive and innate immune mechanisms of immune rejection. In the process, continuous and scalable bioprinting processes will be utilized to generate engineered extracellular matrices for blood vessel fabrication. The biomechanical and biological responses of engineered blood vessel equivalents will be investigated in vitro and in vivo.

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University seeks outstanding postdoctoral applicants with expertise in cell biology or microbiology and microbiome research to join an interdisciplinary team of biologists and engineers to leverage in vitro organ-on-a-chip (Organ Chip) microfluidic culture systems to study and model the intestinal tract and microbiome and its influences on diseases, such as malnutrition-associated with environmental enteric dysfunction (EED), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and radiation-induced injury, as well as therapeutic responses.