10 Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of British Columbia, Canada

The successful applicants will be supervised by MDRU Director Shaun Barker, and BRIMM Director John Steen, and will work within a larger research team, including several MSc students and faculty members. There are also opportunities to interact with a variety of faculty in the Departments of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences and Mining Engineering at UBC, therefore, a willingness to collaborate and mentor graduate students is advantageous.

We highly value the following skills and knowledge for these positions:
• Interest and/or expertise in economic geology, mineral resources and mineral economics
• Strong quantitative skills, particularly in geostatistics, resource estimation or geophysics
• Machine learning and artificial intelligence particularly natural language processing
• Experience with databases and data wrangling

Project: RNA medicines have gained considerable momentum in the past few years with the approval of Onpattro and the COVID-19 messenger RNA vaccines. While lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are the state-of-the-art delivery system for RNA, we recently discovered that polymeric nanoparticles are less inflammatory and induce higher protein expression than LNPs. For this project, we are keen to explore the polymer design space for RNA delivery for a variety of applications. The PDF will work with the Blakney and Kizhakkedathu labs to design and synthesize novel polymers, and test them for RNA delivery and immunogenicity in vivo in preclinical models. We anticipate that polymers are a clinically translatable delivery system for RNA therapeutics.

Undertaking wildlife surveys is critical to produce robust data to inform management decisions around appropriate management strategies. In an effort to reduce the cost and safety concerns associated with undertaking wildlife surveys from helicopters, the interest in the use of drones has grown dramatically in the past few years for this task. This project will first undertake an assessment of the capacity of drone-captured wildlife information to inform survey designs for monitoring wildlife populations (e.g., moose), to consider any potential bias associated with drone-based counts. The PDF will then lead the capture of proof-of-concept data over wildlife to assess animal detection rates using a variety of camera systems and operating parameters, design detection routines, and ultimately work towards a full scale operation trial in the second year of the project.

Dr. Artem Cherkasov is a Professor in the Department of Urologic Sciences, Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, and Senior Scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre. His research interests include computer-aided drug discovery (CADD), structure-activity modeling, drug reprofiling, new cancer therapeutics discovery and development of novel CADD tools and applications.

The Department of Forest Resources Management, UBC-Vancouver campus, seeks a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (PDF) to lead research on cumulative effects of climate change, natural disturbances and forest management on ecosystem services. The successful applicant will work under the supervision of Dr. Gregory Paradis, in collaboration with partners from the Canadian Forest Service (Dr. Eliot McIntire), the BC Ministry of Forests (Dr. Ceres Barros), and other members of the Forest Resources and Environmental Services Hub (FRESH) lab. The project involves developing and implementing conceptual frameworks and software for simulating forest management, climate change and natural disturbances within the context of landscape-scale simulation experiments. Specific technical tasks will include implementing simulation models using the SpaDES toolkit, implementing software linkages to other modules within the SpaDES modelling environment, preparing and validating input datasets, running simulations and analyzing output, and co-authoring manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals. 

A postdoctoral position in complex flow cytometry is available at The University of British Columbia-affiliated BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute in Vancouver, Canada. Working with the Reid research team (https://www.bcchr.ca/greid), the successful applicant will lead the development of an industry-sponsored project to evaluate B cell maturation in antibody-producing cell cultures, and contribute to ongoing studies of immune reconstitution in patients after chemotherapy and pediatric leukemia.

Granzymes are a family of serine proteases with 5 members (GzmA, B, H, K, M) identified in humans. With the exception of Granzyme A and Granzyme B, very little is known about the other 3 proteases, providing many opportunities to carve out a niche for discovery, translation, therapeutics development, patents, and publications. Recently, a number of high impact studies have implicated a key role for GzmK and/or subsets of GzmK+ T cells in inflammaging and/or immune-mediated diseases. Our research program spans basic molecular biology, biochemistry, and proteomics through to target validation, proof-of-concept in animal and human models, and collaborations with clinicians and industry. The Postdoctoral Fellow (PDF) will be responsible for conceiving, designing, and implementing basic and translational research studies characterizing granzyme K (and other granzymes) in immune cell populations and their pathophysiological roles in the context of pruritus and/or inflammation in aging skin and/or other chronic, inflammatory conditions. The position will also provide opportunities in drug discovery in addition to collaborating and with both industry and leading academic collaborators at UBC and abroad.

Dr. Lucia Nappi and Dr. Martin Gleave lead the GUNS study, a genomic-driven neoadjuvant clinical trial that is currently enrolling patients with localized prostate cancer to receive targeted agents and androgen deprivation therapy on the basis of genomic sequencing of the prostate biopsy. The pre and post-treatment tissue and blood samples will be used for genomics, transcriptomics and epigenomics to identify the molecular drivers of treatment response or resistance to standard and experimental drugs.

Do you have a passion for ‘rescuing’ data, reproduceable research and teaching? If so, come join our fantastic team at the Living Data Project. We have a full-time postdoctoral position available, based in Regina (SK), at the University of Regina to work with Dr. Kerri Finlay and Dr. Bruno Soares. The Living Data Project is a national initiative led by the Canadian Institute of Ecology and Evolution (CIEE), to  (1) preserve – using best practices in digital archiving and data management – legacy datasets in ecology, evolution and environmental science; (2) synthesize scientific data and concepts using collaborative team approaches; and (3) provide training for graduate students and other early career researchers in data management, reproducible research, synthesis statistics and scientific collaboration. This is a highly collaborative effort achieved through graduate training, data rescue internships, and working group participation.