Employer: Sandia National Laboratories
Location: Emeryville, CA, United States
Posted: Jun 18, 2013
Expires: Aug 16, 2013
- Description
- Sandia National Laboratories is the nation’s premier science and engineering lab for national security and technology innovation with major facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Livermore, California. We are a world-class team of scientists, engineers, technologists, post docs, and visiting researchers all focused on cutting-edge technology, ranging from homeland defense, global security, biotechnology, and environmental preservation to energy and combustion research, computer security, and nuclear defense. To learn more, please visit our website at www.sandia.gov.
Sandia National Laboratories is searching for a Postdoctoral Appointee for the Biomass Science and Conversion Technology Department located in our Emeryville, CA facility. This position is a temporary, full-time opportunity. Currently, there is no security clearance required for this appointment.
Department Description
The Biomass Science and Conversion Technology Department, located in Livermore, California, performs biological and bioengineering research with applications in advanced biofuels, renewable energy, nanobiology, nanotoxicology, and biofuels. The Biomass Science and Conversion Technology Department at Sandia National Laboratories also plays an essential role in the recently funded DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), one of three Bioenergy Research Centers in the Nation. JBEI is a new multi-organizational research center comprising world-class resources and expertise located in one facility at Emeryville, California. The goal of JBEI is to use rapidly advancing scientific techniques, such as systems and synthetic biology, to accelerate development of the nation’s biofuels industry.
The department contains a multidisciplinary team of approximately 30 staff, postdocs and technologists with expertise in chemical engineering, biochemical engineering, biophysics, analytical chemistry, advanced spectroscopy, microbiology, computational biology, and molecular biology. The basic research activities in the department are focused on developing a basic understanding of the fundamental chemical, biochemical, and thermochemical reactions and interactions that occur at interfaces. The department is also developing a focus on systems and synthetic biology as they relate to biofuel production. Applied research activities are focused on enzyme and microbial engineering for biofuel production, advanced biomass pretreatment, metabolic engineering of algae, and advanced imaging techniques. Key sponsors include the DOE Office of Science, DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Sandia LDRD Program.
Job Summary
The Post-Doctoral Appointee Program is designed to recruit outstanding Ph.D. applicants to assist a line organization in meeting its mission objectives and to provide a professional technical work environment for the employee. The Ph.D. must have been conferred within one to five years prior to employment. These assignments are for a one-year period, with the option at management’s discretion to serve no more than five additional one-year assignments.
Primary Job Duties
We are seeking a Computational Biologist to join a team of researchers investigating the optimization of biofuels production from renewable lignocellulosic biomass. The research team is comprised of biochemical engineers, biologists, chemical engineers, computational scientists, biophysicists and chemists. This position will be hired into the Enzyme Engineering team of the Deconstruction Division at the Joint BioEnergy Institute. Our team is investigating the enzymatic conversion of biomass components (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin) to their simpler components (e.g., monosaccharides and monolignols) within the overall research projects to enhance the production of biofuels from a variety of cellulosic biomass. The multidisciplinary team is using a combination of enzyme engineering, biochemical and biophysical characterization, structural and computational biology, high-throughput screening and genomic and proteomic discovery to identify enzyme targets for modification and iterative improvement of their stability, activity and tolerance to targeted biomass pretreatment protocols. The postdoctoral associate in this position will be tasked with using computational biology to understand how protein structure and dynamics are altered under biomass pretreatment conditions, how these changes correlate with changes in enzyme activity and predicting changes to the protein structure that will enhance enzyme stability in various pretreatment environments. In addition, the postdoctoral researcher will develop algorithms and classification schemes for predicting the likelihood an enzyme will be stable and active in the pretreatment environment using features extracted from protein sequences and structures.
Required
· Expertise in both computational biology/chemistry and bioinformatics
· Strong track record in using computational biology/chemistry and bioinformatics to understand the relationships among protein sequence, structure, dynamics, stability and function
· Strong publication record
· Good communication skills and ability to work with multi-disciplinary teams
Desired
· Research experience in enzyme engineering using rational design approaches
· Background in lignocellulolytic enzymes used in biofuels
· Expertise in design of experiments for optimizing synergistic enzyme mixtures
- To apply
- To learn more about this position and to apply online, please visit our Careers page at http://www.sandia.gov/careers/search-openings.html and reference Job Opening ID Number: 643856.
U.S. Citizenship Normally Required. Equal Opportunity Employer. M/F/D/V.