Research Fellow | MGH Center for Genomic Medicine

The Perlis Laboratory in the Center for Genomic Medicine (CGM) at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School is seeking highly motivated post-doctoral fellow candidates. The post-doctoral fellow will lead projects investigating mechanisms of aberrant microglial-mediated synaptic pruning in patient-derived cellular models of schizophrenia and other neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, using genomic and small molecule perturbagens. Candidates should have experience in cell culture and data analysis. Experience in neurobiology, stem cell biology, neural disease modeling, or large-scale omics studies are a plus.

The laboratory is focused on applying cellular models to drive development of the next generation of therapeutics for brain diseases. This is an excellent opportunity for someone who wants their work to impact real-world care of people with serious mental illness.

The new hire will be appointed as a Research Fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Post-Doc at the Harvard Medical School. This is a fully supported appointment with annual renewal based on merit and achievement. The fellow will also be expected to apply for competitive funding opportunities as available.

PRINCIPAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

The Post-doctoral Fellow principal duties and responsibilities will include performing cutting edge research in the following areas: human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSCs) and neural stem cell models of neural disease, neuroimmunology (e.g. microglia), cellular differentiation and sequencing (RNAseq, scRNAseq, Plate-seq, CRISPR screens, etc.) to identify and understand the mechanisms of action of novel targets and putative therapeutics for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. This position will involve coordination and mentoring of junior technical staff, participate in laboratory management and research planning while working independently on high-priority projects.

The Post-Doctoral fellow will be situated in the MGH under the guidance and mentorship of Dr. Roy. H. Perlis MD, MSc (PI) and Dr. Steven D. Sheridan, Ph.D.

SKILLS & COMPETENCIES REQUIRED:

The ideal candidate should have received (or expect to receive soon) a Ph.D. in neurobiology (including neurodevelopment, neuroinflammation, or neurodegeneration, e.g.) or a related field.

• Experience in deriving and utilizing neural cultures for cellular modeling of disease (e.g. neuronal culture, iPSCs, organoids, neural stem cells, microglia, astrocytes, etc)
• Experience with commonly used bioinformatics tools and databases (e.g. demonstrated competence in languages such as R or Python for bioinformatics analyses).
• High-content image analysis experience a plus.
• First (or co-first) author of one or more peer-reviewed scientific publications.
• Excellent English verbal and written communication skills.
• Able to work both independently and within a collaborative team environment.

EDUCATION and EXPERIENCE:

Candidates should hold a PhD with preference given to applicants with a strong interest in and research training relevant to the areas of neural development, glial function, neuroinflammation, human cellular models of neurological disease, transcriptional regulation including sequencing and or CRISPR screens. In addition to demonstrated experience in the culturing and maintenance of in vitro human cellular models systems, a strong background in working with high dimensional data (e.g. high-throughout gene expression analyses, single cell sequencing, CRISPR screens, proteomics data, etc.) is highly preferred.

WORKING CONDITIONS:

The fellow will be situated in the CGM allowing collaboration with other neuroscientists, stem cell biologists, clinicians and computational biology and genomics investigators; and will also have full access to the molecular biology / biochemistry / cell culture and computational resources in the Perlis Lab and the hospital more generally.

Interested applicants should submit their CV and contacts for references to:

Steven D. Sheridan, Ph.D. (ssheridan2@mgh.harvard.edu)