13 Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of British Columbia, Canada

The Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, invites applications for The Iris and George Brown Postdoctoral Fellow in Next-Generation RNA Therapeutics. The successful Postdoctoral Fellow (PDF) candidate will join a dynamic and multidisciplinary team under the supervision of Dr. Anna Blakney. The successful candidate will work on a project to develop self-amplifying RNA therapies encoding monoclonal antibodies. The Blakney Lab at UBC (blakneylab.msl.ubc.ca) develops next-generation RNA vaccines and therapies based on self-amplifying RNA and using interdisciplinary approaches including bioengineering, immunology, molecular biology and bioinformatics.

Professors Robin Turner and James Piret invite applications for a full-time post-doctoral fellowship position available in the field of bioanalytical Raman microspectroscopy and Raman chemical imaging.  We seek a highly qualified individual with a doctoral degree in chemistry or physics or engineering with an interest in developing process analytical technologies for cell therapy bioprocess applications.  Essential qualifications include experience measuring and analyzing Raman spectra of live or fixed cultured cells using a commercial Raman microspectroscopy instrument and common multivariate chemometric methods (e.g., principal component analysis).  Experience with MATLAB and LabVIEW software applications would be an asset.

One full-time postdoctoral position is available in the lab of Dr. Joanne Matsubara, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Faculty of Medicine UBC. Expected start date is negotiable, although a start-date as early as possible is considered favorable. The research project addresses the overarching challenge of understanding and characterizing molecular and cellular events associated with the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and/or corneal dystrophies.  AMD is a complex, multifactorial disease in which chronic, low-grade inflammation is thought to play a critical role in disease pathogenesis. While treatments exist for the exudative (wet) form of AMD, there are no treatments for the non-exudative (dry) form but many clinical trials are in progress.  Animal models, cell culture methods and human tissue samples will be used in the research studies. For more information about the Matsubara Lab, and our other current areas of eye research, please see: http://matsubaralab.med.ubc.ca, 

The Canadian group in the DarkLight collaboration has an immediate opening for a postdoctoral researcher to join us in a search for new bosons in the mass range from 10 to 20 MeV using the TRIUMF/ARIEL e-linac. The successful applicant will join a small international collaboration and be based at TRIUMF in Vancouver, BC. The brief and intense schedule for the DarkLight experiment means that this position provides a unique opportunity for a young postdoctoral researcher to participate in a particle physics experiment from the design stages right through data taking to a final result during their time at TRIUMF.

The Leslie Lab’s single-molecule technology, Convex Lens-induced Confinement (CLiC), works by squeezing molecules into arrays of nanometer- to micrometer-scale “traps” that are large enough to allow the molecules to move and interact freely, but small enough to keep them confined so they can be imaged over extended periods with a high-powered optical microscope. The result is the world’s first tether-free and high-throughput single-molecule technology for analyzing individual molecular interactions in cell-like conditions. CLiC is capable of detecting, following, and understanding rare molecular events – like the drug/target interactions which can ‘silence’ genes associated with the onset of diseases – and by enabling direct visualization of how the drugs work, help us better engineer them.

A position is open for a postdoctoral fellow with a PhD in neuroscience, biomedical engineering, or a related discipline, and a strong interest in neuroscience, cardiovascular and vascular biology. Interested candidates must be self-motivated and have at least two first-authored papers in peer-reviewed journals. Experience in spinal cord/peripheral nerve stimulation, bladder & bowel dysfunction, experimental animal research, immunocytochemistry, and/or histology is an asset. The postdoctoral fellow will be expected to perform experiments to determine the neuronal and molecular mechanisms underlying cardiovascular and autonomic (i.e., bladder, bowel, sexual, and cardiovascular) dysfunction following spinal cord injury. This involves in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro experiments along with extensive work involving rodent models of spinal cord injury. The fellow will also be expected to write scientific publications, apply for research funding, and present their work at institutional journal clubs and international conferences.

At Dr. Martin McKeown’s lab at UBC Centre for Brain Health, we are seeking a highly motivated and skilled individual to join our research team as a 2-year Postdoctoral Researcher. The successful candidate will be responsible for conducting research in the areas of simultaneous EEG-fMRI preprocessing and denoising, event-related desynchronization and behavioral data analysis, and multi-modal signal processing from wearable sensors. The position requires a strong background in signal processing and Machine Learning techniques, ideally related to neurophysiological data.

The PDF is responsible for supporting the academic activity of four Working Groups focusing on aspects of mitigation of healthcare pollution and health system adaptation to environmental change, sustainable clinical practices, and health system transformation. The PDF will work closely with thought leaders from a number of disciplines to summarize current states, identify knowledge gaps, and lead new content generation. The PDF will work closely with the Commission members (executive committee, commissioners, and advisors) in consultation with and in support of the co-chairs. The PDF will coordinate with a geographically diverse group of commissioners, carry out periodic literature reviews and environmental scans, synthesize progress reports, communicate with the Lancet editorial team, and contribute to final publications (co-authorship). The PDF must maintain continuous familiarity and content expertise in climate change/pollution, health, and healthcare. The PDF is expected to acquire basic understanding of principles and methodologies in health economics, carbon accounting, and healthcare quality frameworks. The PDF is expected to use initiative, ingenuity, and persuasion among parties, and to be an active and effective catalyst to facilitate consensus-driven discussions to identify issues and actions.

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.

We are partnered with the National Research Council of Canada on the project “Building a Multimodal Transportation Network Database and Exploring Data Collection Methods to Support Transportation Operations in the Canadian North,” and the University of Toronto on a Transport Canada project “A tool to optimize the effectiveness of the winter road network in the Canadian North.” We are seeking a full- or part-time postdoctoral fellow or research associate for a 1-2 year position. The transportation system in Canada’s territorial north is sparse, covers immense distances, and is highly seasonal and multimodal. Climate change has created many significant challenges for transportation infrastructure and operations. Overall, there is little (centralized) information and data about the system, making infrastructure investment decisions and transportation planning extremely challenging. The selected candidate will work with an interdisciplinary team consisting of researchers at NRC, University of Toronto Climate Lab, and UBC. The selected candidate will have excellent leadership ability/potential, strong communication skills, and expertise in GIS and spatial databases (a focus on transportation is preferred). Their primary responsibilities will be to 1) lead project administration and management, including communications with research partners and project stakeholders, and deliverables, 2) organize, assess, synthesize, and transfer data on transportation operations in Canada’s Northwest Territories, continuing and completing the setup of the data within a spatial data warehouse (ArcGIS), and 3) work closely with a PhD student supporting the project.

We are seeking highly motivated, self-driven individuals to join a sub-group that studies nuclear fusion at low energy in solid-state materials. This fusion sub-group specializes in the development of benchtop plasma fusion systems and materials that enable expansive studies in underexplored energy regimes for nuclear fusion. This research builds upon foundational work summarized in a 2019 Nature Perspective article entitled “Revisiting the Cold Case of Cold Fusion” (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1256-6#Ack1).  Our fusion sub-group is currently exploring lattice confinement fusion (LCF), i.e. nuclear fusion within the confines of a solid, such as Pd metal. We aim to quantify how fusion reaction cross sections are affected by perturbations to the chemical and nuclear environment of the reaction feedstock. We are in the process of developing an experimental platform to generate precise, accurate, and repeatable data sets at incident particle energies between 0-50 keV. The experimental investigation of fusion processes in this largely unexplored research field will require the development of new measurement instrumentation and cutting-edge analysis techniques in order to inform the development of fundamental scientific theory.