Two postdoctoral or staff scientist/Marine Structural Biology Unit

The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST; see www.oist.jp) is a dynamic new graduate university of science and technology in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. The university is located on 85 hectares of protected forestland overlooking beautiful shoreline and coral reefs. The campus is striking architecturally, and the facilities are outstanding (OIST campus video tour). There are no academic departments, which facilitates multidisciplinary research. Outstanding resources and equipment are provided and managed to encourage easy access and collaboration. English is the official language of the University, and the university research community is fully international, with more than 50 countries represented. OIST is rapidly gaining recognition in the worldwide academic community as a model for excellence in education and research.

Position Summary:

The Marine Structural Biology Unit focuses on characterizing marine organisms by structural biological methods such as cryoelectron tomography and single particle cryoelectron microscopy. These allow unparalleled, near-atomic level insights into the inner workings of our oceans’ inhabitants, especially when paired together with orthogonal analytical techniques such as proteomics and transcriptomics. Corals represent our primary research interest. These tiny colony-building invertebrates form the foundation of coral reefs, incredibly diverse and important ecosystems that have been estimated to house roughly a third of all marine species and provide food to half a billion people. We are interested in obtaining a structural biology perspective on how corals feed themselves, form the symbiotic relationships with the zooxanthellae that they need to thrive, as well as lose these symbionts in a stress-induced response known as coral bleaching. Gaining a better understanding of the latter process is of particular urgency, as climate change-induced heatwaves have caused unprecedentedly massive coral bleachings in the last two decades, calling the future survival of coral reef ecosystems into question.

We are inviting applications for two Staff Scientist / Postdoctoral Researcher positions in the Marine Structural Biology Unit. The successful candidates will be key to the unit’s research activities at the interface of marine- and structural biology (as described in the Hiring unit summary). The specific projects for each candidate will be decided upon after discussion with the unit leader after taking the candidates’ interests and skills into account.
 

From a technical perspective, our unit has privileged in-house access to the full suite of equipment needed to tackle cryo-electron tomography and single particle cryo-EM projects, including Vitrobots, a high-pressure freezer, a top-spec Aquilos 2 cryo-FIB/SEM, as well as Talos L120C / Arctica / Krios cryo-TEMs. We also have access to OIST’s impressive suite of core facilities.
 

We are therefore looking for skilled candidates that are able to make best use of these resources and who are highly motivated to apply their talents to investigate the unit’s primary biological interest – corals. The candidates should demonstrate initiative, creativity, be skilled in the wet lab, and ready to grow beyond their current comfort zone by trying new things and acquiring new skills.
 

In exchange, we offer an environment that supports development of skillsets at the cutting edge of structural biology, which will help the candidates develop into valuable and uniquely qualified specialists. Applicants with a strong desire to explore the secrets of the underwater world may find their experience here especially fulfilling.